Phonos
by Otte
Summary: They created her, but Phonos had to create everything important for herself her life, her family, her identity. But as she sees her death loom closer, she has to wonder if she's ever been right in asserting her humanity.
1. Freeze

**Phonos  
**_**by Otte, who seems incapable of writing oneshots on purpose**_

**Chapter I  
Freeze**

It was getting harder to breath. The air was thin, the frost was biting at her fingers and her toes, the never-ending expanse of pure, unforgiving snow was gnawing away at her self-confidence, and familiar, horrible doubts set in. Nobody would help her now, would they? She would just freeze to death out here, freeze to death with only the knowledge that she had tried to comfort herself with. With a gasp for air, she stumbled, barely able to lift her legs out of the thick, piling snow and almost cried out at the sudden burst of pain slicing across her back, through her pale skin and drawing blood that seemed blistering hot against her skin in the cold, unforgiving winter blizzard.

Groaning and trying to lift herself up, knees planted in the snow, she looked around for any sort of salvation, the wind battering against her face and trying to topple her over. In that instant, it felt as if she was alone in this entire world. She and no-one else stood in this endless, lonesome expanse of sadistic ice and sky. She felt tears cloud her eyes – oh god, not now – as the weight of a seemingly empty, uncaring world seemed to crash down upon her head and crush her beneath its weight.

She unsteadily attempted to get to her feet but the wind was too much and she fell to her side, the cold stinging and burning her bare skin and she felt about ready to let go of the stubborn will that had brought her this far and let the blizzard consume her, body and soul. Sobs shook her bony body and tears clouded her dark eyes, as the loneliness shredded her stomach, and she just wanted to stop. The idea of having to get up and walk more and fight more made her sob out even louder, huge, unrestrained tears rolling down her bony cheeks. Yet at the same time, if she didn't fight until the bitter end, she'd never forgive herself. More importantly, they wouldn't forgive her either.

She had to prove herself. If she failed, they'd hate her. If she dropped to her knees and died without trying, they'd hate her and she'd have deserved her death. She had to…try. She had to, she had to try and make them love her at least. Her own flaws flashed before her eyes. All the horrible things she had done, all the things she'd done wrong and all the people she'd disappointed. She had promised. This…with this…she just couldn't fail.

The snow was clinging to her eyelashes and everything was becoming fuzzy and unclear.

She had promised to become the best; they'd all believed that she would find it. She would bring 52 back. That's what she had promised. Nobody else understood it, nobody else had been willing to help. She remembered the day 52 had been born, as clear as it was happening right before her eyes. They'd all been proud. She had felt…happy. She had felt loved. She had felt…like she had something to offer.

Was she on the ground or still standing? She couldn't even tell. Oh God. It was so hard to breathe.

Her parents, upon learning the progress she'd made, had smiled at her. They'd complimented her. For once in her life, she had had worth. She had merit. She meant something to somebody. Anybody.

Something intangible hung in front of her eyes. Blurred, barely visible…she wasn't even sure if it was real, she wasn't even sure if she was dead or alive. Perhaps it was…a Pokemon. But then again…she couldn't really be sure. It could be just her own delusion. It faded in and out of view, spots forming in her eyes clouding her view and she couldn't even pick out of the colours of it. All the same, it reminded her of something. Something so familiar that seemed to fit right in place beside her, but at that same time

"Phonos."

A voice. Somewhat familiar. A firm voice that spoke of confidence, of strength and of anything that she just couldn't get a hold of no matter what she thought. In that instantly, bold and uncharacteristic fury flared in her chest and she caught her breath in her throat in surprise. A disembodied voice had all the characteristics she desired, no, needed. The characteristics she tried to fake, everything that was dangled in front of her in tiny little scraps, in order to make her jump through hoops like the attention-starved puppy she was.

She hated it for it. She wanted to scream and kick and hurt whatever source this voice was coming from. Phonos cursed herself for her weakness, for how wretched and pathetic she was. Most of all, for never letting herself be so weak, nothing but the failure, the defect and the imperfection that she was.

"Phonos…you let it all happen, didn't you?"

She agreed with the voice. Or this thing that was floating about nearby. She didn't even know what was going on any more, and she could barely form one coherent thought to defend herself with. The logic she had hid behind as a shield for a huge part of her life had been shattered, and shameful tears burst through, as if a dam had been broken, and Phonos' own self-loathing blazed, singeing away anything and everything in it's eager gluttony to consume and destroy.

"You…"

It was the sudden trembling in the voice that inspired fear, fear of something that was far beyond the reach of her comprehension and it instilled in her a basic, primitive instinct. Fight or flight. As the paralysis spread throughout her body, she wasn't sure either were options.

"Will you ever understand what you were given?"

She opened her mouth to retort, but all that came out was a low howl of sheer pain, of anger and fear and sadness and every emotion in between. It was like a child's cry, something that was such pure emotion, with no complications of rationality or socially taught restraint – it was a sound she had never heard in a human adult make and as she screamed, she started to drift, feeling as if the sound she was making wasn't coming from her own mouth.

The sound was something no human being should make.

Then again, she wasn't a human being. And perhaps, for once, she should give up pretending that she is. Maybe the games had gone on long enough.

Her mind began to wander deliriously, the snow and the intangible figure fading from view. Without warning, entirely without her consent and despite herself, one phrase was burning through her mind, something she wished with all her heart that she couldn't remember:

"Subject V-Twenty is showing progress."

The first thing in her life she could ever remember were those excited words, coming from the man she considers her father. The man she stubbornly insists is her father, even if he has never said anything but to the contrary of it. Dr Howard Lester was a cold man, a distant man that only ever got excited about his work. About his progress. In truth, the man was little less than a sociopath and yet Phonos clung to his words. She had to insist on having a father. She had even considered Annie her sister. Teenaged, misanthropic Annie, who lost her temper with her too many times to count and beat the hell out of her if she dared called Dr Lester 'dad' in her presence.

Once again, she clung. She clung so tightly, despite knowing that it was killing her and stubbornly ignoring that Annie wished the other girl had never existed, wished that her father had never succeeded in making such a monstrosity.

If she could go back in time and change things…she wouldn't. She doubted that without the one-sided affection, without convincing herself that she was truly loved as a person and not as a project, Phonos' life would have flared out. That's what had been wrong with the others, she thought. They hadn't learned what a family was, and had never attempted to create a makeshift one for themselves. They had never tried to distort the reality of what they were, trying to fracture that in some way they were human, humans that were loved and would be missed as a person if they were gone, not just be the cause of a bit of annoyance, disappointments and sighs of 'Oh well, back to the drawing board'.

She doubted she would ever stop playing pretend. Even twenty-three years down the line, she was still playing. She was still fooling herself into thinking that was something beyond a theory proven right.

She remembered being born in a secret, hidden place known as the Bane Institute of Pokemon Genetics. She remembered the sudden rush, how all the lights, thing she had seen before, seemed to come into focus and she became aware of her own existence, the sudden rush of consciousness had made her want to shriek in pain, she remember it clearly. She remembered the sudden awareness of herself, the numbness that had been in her body all her life suddenly bursting into sudden pain, and it was a wonderful sort of pain. She remembered it all calming down and then the passive, unknowing life she had known was gone.

Her birth was another thing she had tried to forget, after learning that no human beings could remember their birth. For all her pathetic endeavours, she remembered it as clearly as she remembered the day before, as every moment she ever had was stored into her memory – perfect down to the last details, down to the number of buttons on a persons coat or every tiny little thought she had had or any emotion that she had had to fight the urge of acting upon. Every little regret she had ever had was burned into her memory, no matter how hard she tried to fight it.

Sometimes, she felt as if her birth had been one monumental, inerasable regret. It pained her, it physically pained her at times, that this huge well of remorse existed at the very beginning of her life and there was nothing she could do to wipe it away.

That's why humans forget things. It makes life easier. Having every moment in your life stored away in your mind, to be perused on a conscious or unwanted whim in perfect accuracy…it hurt. It wasn't normal.

Neither was her birth. True, she had 'mother' holding her and her 'family' crowding around getting excited over everything she had, every little movement she made. Despite this, there was no affection. Only self-indulgent pride, pats on the back, various people nodding in approval, the scribbling of notes and scientists congratulating themselves on a job well done and letting their chests swell with pride at having created something so perfect. So perfect.

She had looked up at the sterile white walls. She had looked across at the strange, beaming faces making all that noise. Then she had done something they had never expected this baby to do.

She had cried.

It was from there, everything had plummeted into chaos, into misery, into lies. If she had never cried like a human baby, if she had stayed still and empty like all the other experiments…if she hadn't been born with a soul, perhaps things would have happened differently. She wouldn't have tried to be a real human, she wouldn't have tried to be a real Pokemon…she would never have even thought of being anything beyond what she was born as. She would never have thought it conceivable.

They hadn't expected this. None of the other experiments at their lab had cried, or laughed, or any emotion that a human being was capable of, and so very often took for granted. It was in that instant that it all became obvious – something was _wrong_. Their perfect specimen had humanity. It was imperfect and flawed.

Later on, Phonos would realise that perhaps Dad would have simply had her written off as a failed attempt, and that she may have never lived past that moment if not for "mother's" protests at the specimen being destroyed. Subconsciously, Phonos had then registered Dr Tsume as her mother, as her protector. She didn't realise the selfish reasoning then. She didn't realise that all Dr Tsume wanted to do was experiment on her soul, and see if it could be destroyed or cloned or manipulated in any way. That was all Phonos had inspired in her, and she didn't care if Phonos was destroyed through trying to discover more about her unprecedented interest.

At that time, all Phonos cared about was that she had a mother. She had somebody to keep her alive and somebody to live for. Dr Tsume was her mother, and Dr Lester was her father, and soon in her life Annie Lester would become her appointed sister. The parents barely knew each other, the sister hated her, and the familial feelings weren't mutual or welcome but Phonos refused to accept anything else. It was her reality and she wouldn't let anybody take it away from her, as unhealthy as it may be.

_Author's Notes: Apologies about this to anybody who's been reading this and hoping for the next part! I've just decided to give up on keeping it to two parts and split the first part into chapters to make it more accessible. I think this'll mean I'll get more of the second part up quicker. Reviews are appreciated._


	2. Natural

**Chapter II  
Natural**

Trotting down the hallways after the slender figure of Dr Tsume, Phonos couldn't help but look around excitably. This was the first time she had been let out of her little white room and despite the similarly sterile, colourless surroundings of the hallway she was beyond thrilled to be out. Besides that, Mum had actually called for her and said she wanted her to come with her. Mum had never asked anything of her before, and had only come in to take blood samples and perform tests before. Once though, Mum had told her about the project she had been born from – she was V-Twenty of the Phonos project, a genetically modified Ditto. Phonos didn't understand any of that, but simply took it in her stride and asked if she could be called 'Phonos' instead of 'V-Twenty'. Phonos sounded like a name. Mum had been surprised, but somewhat pleased and excited by this, quietly agreeing and scribbling down notes. She didn't understand any of that either.

All she knew was that she had a name, and it was Phonos. Until today, that was the most excited she had ever been about anything in her short life. Phonos had said her name over and over to herself. She had said it so many times that she had made her throat so dry and sore that she had to have some water brought in for her. In fact, because she was so adept at talking and saying her name, she had gotten milk that day. She smiled and felt pride blossom in her chest at the memory. They were always so pleased when she said words perfectly, but they were always displeased if she said anything out of turn. It was so very confusing, because the category of what was out of turn was broad, vague and incredibly puzzling.

"Phonos," Mum said all of a sudden, her voice clear, cool and controlled. Phonos looked up at the tall woman eagerly, barely able to keep still. She knew she had to. Mum wasn't hopping from one foot to the other, so Phonos thought that she shouldn't either. Did she have to not be excited, was she being foolish? She was always confused about how she was supposed to act. It was so hard to tell what was expected sometimes. Sometimes they berated her for acting in a certain way, but it was getting more and more difficult to tell what she was doing wrong when they punished her. All of a sudden, they would begin to feed her again and she wouldn't even know what she's done right to deserve it.

"Yes, madam?" she replied, trying to mimic Mum's cool voice but her own words were still trembling and high-pitched with enthusiasm. She didn't dare address Mum as her mother or by her real name. Despite her youthfulness, Phonos had been taught, and fully understood, that her place was beneath her, and in the face of Mum's confidence, prettiness and smartness, Phonos didn't question it in the slightest.

"You haven't transformed in a very, very long time," she continued, not turning around to look back at the young girl, who was struggling to keep up the pace, "We need to run a few tests to make sure everything is in working order. After that, you will perform a few tasks."

Phonos nodded along eagerly, unsure whether to reply or not as Mum trailed off into an elongated silence, no matter how many questions she was dying to ask. Mostly it was about the transformation – she could transform all she wanted into any Pokemon she knew, and she even had more special things about her than that. She just liked being human, and Mum had said that she was created so she could be a human.

She didn't understand why that was bad, really. But that was just one of the questions she couldn't get out of her head, and had to stop from coming out of her mouth.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and burst out with, "Madam, what tasks am I to do?"

This didn't go down well and she instantly felt furious at herself for upsetting Mum. Mum's white lab coat whipped about her heels as she turned around, her bright green eyes narrowed and her eyebrows knitting together in irritation.

"Do not speak out of turn," she commanded and Phonos nodded meekly, looking at the ground and putting her mouth as tight shut as she possibly could, as if to stop herself from even letting the tiniest noise slip out. That had been incredibly stupid of her.

As they continued to walk, ignoring all the doors on either side of them or any people that brushed past, stealing curious glances at Phonos as they passed, Phonos' thoughts kept drifting back to that instant when she had decided to be so rude and berating herself for being so stupid and reckless. Mum would have never made that mistake, were she in her place. Mum would have known exactly what she should have done.

Suddenly, Mum came to an unexpected halt and Phonos, embarrassingly enough, wandered right past her, too absorbed in her thoughts to notice that she was supposed to stop. Mum either didn't notice or didn't care that her 'daughter' was going very red in the face as she darted back to her Mums side, and simply pushed open the wooden door, engraved with something that Phonos couldn't understand. She hadn't been taught to read as of yet, and didn't really understand the concept.

"Go inside and sit on that chair. Please do not move unless instructed and wait for further orders," Mum said. Phonos nodded and headed in, jumping as the door slammed loudly behind her. The room was very similar to her cold and white and empty, but it was slightly different. There was a little metal chair that was fused with the floor tiles and a huge black thing hanging off the wall. Resisting the urge to stare at the black thing, she headed over to the metal chair and sat down, lining her back up perfectly against the chair and placing both of her arms on the armrests, careful to keep her feet running parallel to each other and to keep perfectly still. Mum didn't like it if she sat incorrectly.

For a few moments, there was perfect, unbroken silence in the room. That kind of silence where you could hear your own breath, and where your heartbeat seemed abnormally loud.

Without warning, a voice broke through the silence, almost making Phonos jump again.

"Subject V-Twenty," a voice she recognized as her father's said, apparently coming out of nowhere, "Look up at the TV screen. It is the black shape over the door."

Phonos obeyed and shrieked in surprise at what she saw, having to physically resist the urge to leap out of her seat and run away there and then. Suddenly, the black shape wasn't entirely black. In the middle, framed by shiny black metal, was Dr Lester, her father. Right down to every hair on his moustache and his disapproving frown, he was there. She couldn't help but shake all over. What in the world was going on?

"This is known as a television screen. It is a piece of man-made modern technology which is designed to display images of real items, usually in rapid progression to give the illusion of movement, and can also be used to play recorded sounds. It is most often used as an entertainment system. The specifics of this technology will be explained to you in further detail later, as we expect you to begin learning these things soon. As our oldest successful specimen at five years old, you will begin working in whatever ways you can to test your capabilities and get an accurate estimate of your life expectancy. Do not attempt to respond to the screen, as it is a one-way system," Dad said in his low, gruff voice. Phonos' brain was running laps in order to try and process this all at once. She had no idea what half of the things her father had just said meant, and she instantly started panicking. Was she supposed to understand all this already, had she missed something or not came to understand something everybody else did? She only nodded in response, her mouth dry and her back starting to ache a little from being held so stiff and straight.

Dad suddenly disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the image of a pink, blobby Pokemon against a perfectly white background. Phonos instantly felt alarm rise in her chest, feeling she knew where this was going.

"Transform into this, your natural form," Dad instructed. Phonos felt as though she was suddenly bound in place by a million, rib-crushing metal chains. Her heart was pounding and she could hear the blood in her ears, and an unfamiliar emotion tore at her chest and made her want to scream and leap out of that chair, to cause the most chaos anybody had ever seen and destroy everything.

Yet she remained there, whether through her docile, subservient nature or the fact her body seemed to be something entirely different to herself, as if that person sitting in the chair was a total stranger, and she was simply drifting outside of the scene, watching it all.

Her natural form. She wanted to cry at the agony and confusion those three words had sent coursing through her soul. All she wanted to do was throw everything aside and run. Never stopping. Never stopping once and if anybody tried to catch her, they would be the unlucky ones. She knew what she could do. She could get out. She could. She could, if she weren't so horribly afraid. Afraid of what might be outside this place, afraid of Mum and Dad hating her…just so afraid of everything.

She wasn't that. She was a human. She was a five-year-old girl called Phonos. She had bright green eyes like her Mum, and the pale skin and curly black hair of her Dad. She knew she was human, she was like any girl; her favourite food was mashed potato and for a few years she had kept having nightmares about monsters that lived outside the laboratory that would gobble her up. Mum had said that children had bad dreams like that sometimes.

That was her. She wasn't anything else. She was Phonos. Her name was Phonos. She was Phonos. She was Phonos, she was Phonos, she was Phonos…

"Now, subject V-twenty!" Dr Lester, no, _Dad_ snapped without warning. Phonos suddenly realised where she was, suddenly felt the painful strain on her back again and was staring at the image of the shapeless Pokemon on the TV screen, her heard banging against her ribs as if it wanted to tear through her chest.

Resisting the urge to lift her arms to wipe her nose or eyes, she breathed in deeply and felt a strange sensation sweep through her body that she hadn't felt in a very long time. It was something that wasn't quite painful…but distinctly unpleasant all the same. Something her vocabulary, even if was quite extensive for a five year old, couldn't comprehend or explain.

She had felt it many times, she felt it whenever her DNA changed and restructured itself with careful precision into the form she wanted to become.

"Hm, interesting," Dad said, and the image changed to that of a long, purple snake with a pair of red and black eyes on its chest, and a forked tongue dangling from its mouth, "Transform into an Arbok now, with this particular pattern on its hood."

Resigning herself to it, Phonos began to change again. If she was helping Dad…she couldn't complain too much.


	3. Descent

**Chapter III  
Descent**

Dad was angry. Phonos knew he was, but she couldn't pinpoint what she had done. For some reason, he was snapping at the other scientists and seemed more impatient than usual, and when her sister Annie came in to bring him a cup of coffee, he had banged his hand against the desk and told her to stop walking in without knocking. When Phonos had asked what was the matter, Annie had simply told Phonos to…she wasn't sure what it meant, and she was sure that from the way she said it she guessed it was something that shouldn't be said, but she had told her to 'piss off'. She supposed it was a way of telling her off that she wasn't familiar with. When Annie was ten, Phonos thought to herself, she would bet that Annie had never needed somebody to tell her to piss off.

She must have done something exceptionally bad to prompt a scolding she wasn't already familiar with.

She squirmed anxiously in her seat, watching Dad work and almost seeing the veins bulge in his forehead.

"Don't cry," she told herself sternly, folding her arms and gripping her left forearm as tightly as she could. Crying was self-indulgent, and only bad things happened when she cried. She wouldn't let herself behave so childishly.

Dad scribbled away on the papers at his desk, looking absolutely furious and Phonos felt the weight in her chest grow heavier and slowly sink deeper down. She stupidly opened and closed her mouth, desperately wishing she could be of use. But if even Annie, who was very kind and pretty and well-loved by him, would be told off when he was in this mood, Phonos didn't want to chance it. She knew that much about her family, at least.

The silence continued as Dad opened an envelope and reached in for the contents, his eyebrows pulling closer and closer together and his teeth gritted furiously.

"Goddamnit!" he shouted all of a sudden, slamming the paper into the desk with violent force, and making Phonos jump in her seat. He looked up at Phonos with an accusing, frustrated gaze and leaned back in his seat, shoving the paper aside. She could have sworn she could have heard, amongst his angry mumblings, the name 'Dr Tsume'.

She stayed perfectly still, not even daring to fidget despite how much she wanted to and how much her stomach was squirming. She needed to calm down before she did something bad and made Dad even more irritated and unhappy than he already was. Was it her or that letter that had him irritated? Phonos couldn't figure it out, and despite the pressing, desperate need she felt to fracture lengthy silence between the two, she daren't say anything.

"You are probably wondering what you're doing here," he said all of a sudden, startling Phonos and making her flinch for what felt like the millionth time in the past fifteen minutes. She made an effort to sit up straight and retain a perfect posture, as she had been taught to do.

Another empty silence. Anxieties gnawed away at Phonos' mind; was Dad actually expecting her to talk? If so that was completely unforeseen, and she had no idea what to make of it. Head swimming, she trained to retain eye-contact, but Dad's gaze was fierce and intensely frightening, and Phonos couldn't keep it up.

"Quite frankly, it's because I'm tired of Dr Tsume's stubbornness not to put you to any real use. You have become a real liability in this establishment, and your little household tasks don't hold water for what we're trying to hold down and achieve here," he said, and Phonos felt profoundly stupid for thinking that he wanted her to actually say something, "And since of course, Dr Tsume still wants to study your so-called soul, like hell you even have such a thing, we've got to listen to what she has to say and can't just have you terminated or fired like everything else around here that doesn't do proper work."

Phonos was getting the distinct feeling he wasn't so much talking to her as he was ranting at her. The thought was of no comfort to her at all.

"I believe it's time to put your abilities to use. Ten years of pampering you is quite enough, in my opinion and Dr Tsume's orders be damned if she thinks we can afford to have you lodging here without being of any use for much longer," he said. Phonos had to keep the excitement out of her face. She was going to do something useful for Dad? Maybe this would at least help him get out of his bad mood, and she could stop being as worthless as she was. Dad looked at her, as if trying to decide something particularly difficult and then leaned back in his leather chair, picking up the paper lying on the desk, "Our sources tell us that our spy in the Indigo Plateau, has been discovered and arrested for leaking information about the whereabouts of the powerful Kanto Pokemon Mewtwo who has been under the Kantonian government protection for some time now, to us."

Phonos listened attentively, not entirely sure where Dad was going with this. She couldn't help but be eager to hear more though – this was a real chance to do something useful for Dad, and maybe Mum as well, if she needed this helped all of them. Even Annie might be pleased in her cheering Dad up later, though she knew better than to expect too much.

"It is absolutely vital that you do not reveal that you are a Ditto, or that you work for us. You simply disguise yourself as an older trainer and enter the plateau. Once there, make sure to transform into something that wouldn't be noticed and spy on the Elite Four. Report back any information as often as you can. Do _not _stick to one method of communication. You must be perfect in this – nobody in Kanto wants any of us here to gain access to this information and it _will_ cause a lot of trouble if somebody else is caught. You _must _be perfect. Do you understand?"

Phonos startled slightly at the question, which sounded entirely non-rhetorical. However, she nodded, attempting to contain the pride and excitement that was about ready to burst from her. She had nothing but useless and worthless all her life, despite being designed to be some sort of perfect weapon of the Institute, and finally she had a chance to do something of any actual use.

"Yes, sir," she said finally.

She was ten years old but in that instant, she had given her childhood away.


	4. Disquiet

**Chapter IV  
Disquiet**

Trembling with trepidation, Phonos adjusted her jacket for what had to be the fiftieth time that day. The travel from Veilstone City across the seas on the ship had been effortless at best, and Victory Road had been beyond easy for her. She had been well-trained, so she owed no credit to herself for that one. Mum and Dad had both taught her how to transform into any Pokemon instantly, which all Ditto could do – it was just made that bit more difficult when the Pokemon wasn't in picture or physical form in front of her face. Plus she had had to learn almost every single Pokemon move on the face of the planet from scratch, something apparently only she could do, simply due to the masterful designing and genetic manipulation of her 'family'.

This was even more difficult. Phonos had never been creative; she had never been taught how creativity worked. She didn't understand how people could just make things up so easily, so creating a whole new human, entirely from her own mind, was more difficult than anticipated. As she had expected, she just had ended up with an older, taller version of her human self. All thanks to her own dull, uncreative mind.

She checked that the entire set of badges were there, again. She had been very conscientious about it all the way there, worrying what would happen if she wasn't allowed to entire the league building if one got lost along the way. What would she do if the guard discovered they weren't hers? It was easy to get a set of badges; Dad had made sure to give her a real set that a worker had earned in their younger days, as well as some Kantonian clothing popular with trainers. She didn't know how the guard could work it out, but she didn't know what people were capable of. Were humans always as clever and all-knowing as everybody at the Institute was? She had always got the feeling that Mum knew everything that was going on, and she had to wonder if this was some sort of human trait, or whether Phonos just made everything really obvious.

Some spy she was, she thought to herself with a heavy level of disgust. Inhaling deeply, she steeled herself and began to walk out of the cave. Being so used to constant florescent lighting, she did not feeling at all at home in the darkness of the cavern.

"Hey, you!" a voice behind her suddenly shouted, and it took every bit of control Phonos had not to jump about five feet in the air at the unexpected noise. She breathed at a steady, controlled pace - she needed to relax. She wasn't exactly the level-headed agent she needed to be to get this done. Dad would absolutely hate her if she managed to make a mess of this in her usual manner.

"Yes?" she said, mimicking Mum's cool, collected voice as best as she could. How Mum managed to keep up being so confident and calm all the time was absolutely beyond her. It was beyond her why Dad had even picked her, of all the people. He had said she was designed for this, but Phonos had to wonder if there was a design flaw.

Behind her was a short, wiry boy with fluffy white-blonde hair that seemed to just stick up everywhere wildly. She had absolutely no idea if this was the intended effect or it was just how this boy's hair grew. He quirked a long eyebrow and plucked a pokeball off of his belt eagerly, a broad, toothy grin spreading across his face.

"Whaddya mean what?" he said cheekily, and Phonos' eyes widened in surprise at the informality in his tone, "Battle! C'mon. Let's practice. Three on three, so we can both still make it to the league."

Phonos didn't have any idea what to say to this. Dad had explained every conceivable situation to her, and she knew the rule about the fact trainers couldn't refuse a challenge if eye-contract had been made, and it wasn't like she hadn't been supplied with six top-notch Pokemon in case such a situation should arise.

It was just the pure and simply fact she had never been in a Pokemon battle before where she wasn't, well, the Pokemon battling. In fact…the idea that she would be the human for once was…nice. She had tried so hard to behave like a human and have a human family, and then, for once, she was finally being treated like one and, best of all, she had the chance to do what human children did. Admittedly, the Pokemon weren't hers and were ones she felt no emotional connection to. In addition to this, Phonos couldn't deny that it was all a complex fabrication, but all the same…she could always pretend. She was good at blurring the lines between real and dream.

"Ah, well, alright," she said. The boy excitably grabbed a pokeball at seemingly random from his belt and threw it across the space between the two trainers. It skidded across the ground and split open in a burst of bright light. The shape of a bulky Pokemon began to form, and as the light faded, it bunched its fists menacingly, sparks crackling on its black and yellow pelt. Instantly, she recognised it as an Electabuzz – a male, well-trained Electabuzz by the looks of it.

"Meet Voltage, my Electabuzz," he announced, casually sitting himself on a nearby rock, folding his legs and putting his hands on his knees on the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was, Phonos wasn't exactly the best person at understanding these things.

Having made sure to memorise her Pokemon and which ones were which, she carefully plucked a pokeball from her belt and opened it with a gentle tap, knowing first-hand how frightening it was to suddenly get hurled at the floor and have your molecular structure suddenly rebuild itself without any sort of warning. In a brief flash of light, the tall, intimidating figure of a bipedal Pokemon appeared, hissing and spitting as if she had been waiting to do this all day, and throwing open her clawe, winged arms with a roar. Compared to the spiky blue dragon that had just formed, the little Kantonian electric Pokemon didn't look as intimidating at he had before. Judging by the subtle widening of Voltage's eyes and that way the Electabuzz's fists loosened ever so slightly, the electric Pokemon knew fine well it wasn't in the best of positions.

The boy whistled appreciatively.

"A Sinnoh Pokemon, huh? Faancy. What's this…Gar…Gar-something, I know that much. Garmunch? Oh, Garchomp, yeah," he said, looking up at the Pokemon, seemingly impressed by her choice before he stared right across at her yet again, smirking and looking as if he had just revealed that his Electabuzz was actually Mewtwo in disguise, "We'll still wipe the floor with you though."

"Doubt it," Voltage blurted out, sounding a bit bored. Phonos was careful not to smile at the Pokemon's cynicism, and the fact the boy seemed to be cheering Voltage on, not realising that that hadn't been the intimidating, agreeable growl he had presumed it was. She knew that whilst Phonos was capable of understanding the Pokemon's speech, the boy couldn't actually understand him. And neither should she, she realised with a jolt. She was going to ignore it and pretend they were just growling - she didn't want to ruin the illusion she had set up for herself until she absolutely had to break it.

The other boy clapped his hands excitably and pointed at the Garchomp, still not moving much from his relaxed, cross-legged position.

"Voltage, Low Kick!" he ordered. The Electabuzz suddenly streaked forward in a blur of yellow and black, stretching his leg back and slamming it into the Garchomp. The Pokemon, who had been too busy roaring and trying to intimidate her opponent to react, was knocked to the floor with a huge crash and a large cloud of dust.

Voltage was rearing back for another attack, but Garchomp leapt to her feet with unexpected agility and rushed towards him, glowing bright, lucid blue. The Garchomp's roar ripped at her eardrums as the dragon Pokemon slammed into the smaller Pokemon, crushing him to the ground with the full force of her Dragon Rush. Phonos suddenly realised that she hadn't issued any commands yet.

"Garchomp, Dragon Claw!" she commanded, just picking the first attack that came into her head.

"Light Screen!" the boy retorted quickly, seemingly very at ease about the entire thing. Phonos knew that while she knew nothing about the Garchomp, the boy would know his Electabuzz inside out and be able to work with him seamlessly through all the experience they'd had together. Despite herself, she felt a prickling of envy.

Garchomp's deadly claws plummeted forward, burning bright and blue, Voltage threw out his thick, muscular arms and a luminous shield of light formed between his palms, and the Dragon Claw simply cracked harmlessly against it. As the dragon Pokemon faltered, the Electabuzz grinned and smacked his palms together. With a high pitched shrieking noise, shining star-shaped missiles pelted into Garchomp's chest with impressive force and buffeted the dragon Pokemon aside, sent her plummeting backwards and landing on her back with a gruesome crack.

Voltage leapt to his feet with considerable more ease than the larger Pokemon, who seemed surprisingly at a disadvantage. Shaking her head, the dragon Pokemon got to her feet and planted her feet firmly in the ground, the claws cracking through the rock and implanting themselves firmly. If she fell over again now, she probably wasn't taking the bottoms of her legs with her, Phonos realised with a grimace. Did she really want to inform the Garchomp of that? The other Pokemon probably knew what she was doing better than Phonos did.

Without any sort of warning, both Pokemon began to shriek, and Garchomp slammed her front claws into the ground with powerful force, sending ripples and fractures through the ground. Voltage stumbled as the ground beneath him shook and cracked and the Electabuzz swore in alarm, barely dodging a rock that almost plummeted on top of his head and knocked him out cold. Seemingly without intending to do it, Voltage released another Swift barrage which headed straight for Garchomp, who was powerless to do anything against the attack. The stars slammed into her one-by-one and as she swayed dizzily on the spot, Voltage's face twisted into a mischievous grin.

He darted forward speedily and drew back his left fist, clenching it tight and bringing all the power he could into the muscles in his arms. He leapt up towards the Garchomp and his fist flared as he brought the Focus Punch up and slammed it powerfully against the Garchomp's chin. The Pokemon howled and released her grip on the ground, stumbling aside as Voltage fell to the ground, edging around the wounded dragon, as if unsure what would come next.

"Right, awesome. Low Kick it and we're done with this one," the boy commanded casually, his mouth stretched wide in a very toothy grin. Voltage complied and quickly swung his leg up, impacting onto Garchomp's stomach and sending the much larger Pokemon to the ground for the very last time.

As Voltage watched the Pokemon, wary that she should get up, Phonos saw Garchomp twitch, as if attempting to stand before her body lay completely limp. The only movement remaining Iin the dragon's body was the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

"Hm," Voltage said quietly to himself, looking at his own hand with deep interest, "Didn't think I could manage that one."

Blinking and feeling surprised at the powerful Pokemon's loss, Phonos lifted up the pokeball and returned the unfamiliar Pokemon for the rest she needed, desperately wishing she could say something at all useful at this point and wishing that her cheeks would stop burning. Back home, everybody would really think she's useless for losing something as mundane and simple as a Pokemon battle. She stared at the warm metal sphere in her hand, wishing that the Pokemon was conscious so she could apologise for letting the Garchomp lose.

For a few quiet minutes, she didn't even notice the boy and his Electabuzz staring at her, she was so wrapped up in her anxieties.

"Hey, are you okay?" the boy asked suddenly, standing up and walking towards her. Phonos looked up in surprise, completely and utterly taken aback by the question. What kind of question _was _that? She couldn't even think of a reply in her surprise. She simply stared at him as if he'd just asked if she was secretly a genetically modified Ditto. He quirked his eyebrow again, looking deeply puzzled.

"Uh…yanno. We can stop now and just not mention this if you want? You look a bit freaked," he continued, reaching forward and resting a hand on Phonos' shoulder comfortingly. Phonos simply looked at the hand and then back at him, at a complete loss for words. Not at all sure what to make of this, the boy exchanged a confused glance with Voltage and Phonos suddenly cleared her throat sheepishly, trying to continue as if she hadn't just been staring idiotically at them without saying anything for the past few minutes.

She could barely believe how stupid she was acting over a silly question. If Mum or Dad were here, they'd be gravely disappointed in her and they'd probably scold her appropriately. She decided that since they weren't here, she'd just have to take into her own hands and skip her meals until she could find two brain cells to rub together. She wasn't going to get negligent on herself.

"Yes, thank you. I would appreciate that sir," she said and then went bright red. She had just called him sir. He had to be at least, physically, two years younger than her and she had just let a 'sir' slip out. She mentally screamed at herself for being so slack and conspicuously suspicious. She was letting her one chance slip by her. If she couldn't at least do this well, she deserved to be terminated just like Dad wanted her to be. She could barely believe her own idiocy and had to clench her fist from stopping herself from pulling out her hair in frustration at herself. Moron, she thought to herself, moron, stupid, stupid.

The boy just raised an eyebrow and shrugged it off within seconds though. Perhaps he just presumed children from Sinnoh grew up with such mannerisms programmed into them like she did. Or maybe he just didn't care either way.

"Right, no problem. Howsa 'bout we get out of this cave then?" the boy said with an amiable smile. Phonos narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but began to follow the boy, Voltage walking in between, glancing back at her over and over, his furry yellow brow creased in thought. It was only through the years of training and teaching that she managed to retain a perfect composure, pretending to be ignorant of the Electabuzz's unease.

She had to wonder if the brightly coloured Pokemon knew what she was, or if she had already ruined it for herself. She continued walking, her postured refined and practiced and her arms swinging ever-so-slightly in those defined, controlled movements she had mimicked Mum doing too many times to count.

Suddenly, the boy cleared his throat loudly and Phonos looked at him surprise, seeing that he was twiddling his thumbs at a fast pace and looking rather awkward. He threw a look back over his shoulder at the human and Pokemon following him.

"So uh…I'm Calvin," he said, fidgeting and not looking at all comfortable with the heavy, long silence that was hanging over their heads. He grinned at her, "And don't you dare asking where Hobbes is! I've heard that one plenty, let me tell you."

Phonos stared. Hobs. Hobs, as fair as she knew, were flat, circular platforms on the top of ovens used for cooking. She promptly decided, there and then, she was more confused than she ever would be in her life.

Without a clue of what to say in response, Phonos fell back onto her usual plan - to just say nothing at all. It was better than trying and getting it wrong, after all. She couldn't afford to make mistakes. Dad had told her many times before, drilled it into her mind - she had to be perfect.

The awkward silence continued, as Calvin lead the small group out of the cave and into the suddenly blindingly bright sunlight. It was easy to forget that even with the effects of her Flash technique; it was still very much dimly lit inside the cave. An oversight she had best remember in the future.

"So….are you going to tell me your name or what?" Calvin asked suddenly, an edge of anxious impatience and irritation slicing through the air at her, and strangely she suddenly felt more at ease. She could at least handle hostility better than his disturbingly earnest friendliness; she had never known anybody to be as bizarrely relaxed and open as Calvin was.

"Oh," Phonos replied, quickly summoning the first name she could think of, "It's Annie. Annie Lester."

Calvin smiled, apparently satisfied with her answer and nodded, informing her that it was a very nice name. Meanwhile, Phonos' stomach squirmed – would Annie be angry at her for using her name? She cared for her sister dearly and wanted her to never be angry at her, but it was too late to rectify a mistake if one had been made. Dad would be furious if she got her sister into trouble somehow, and she desperately wished she had just made up a completely new name, rather than giving the family name of an influential geneticist to the enemy, along with their daughter's name. How was she supposed to know if this boy, Calvin, was as innocent as he appeared?

Without warning, and without a single rational thought, Phonos sprinted off towards the league building, ignoring the startled cries of Calvin and Voltage behind her.


	5. Attack

**Chapter V  
Attack**

Phonos sat down onto the toilet seat and buried her face in her sweating palms, her chest heaving and her mind spinning wildly. All the training she had had, all the trust Dad had put in her…and she was running around wildly like a child frightened by invisible monsters. Deciding that staying in this form would be very unwise, she straightened up, knowing that her Mum would be disappointed if she saw her in such sloppy form, closed her eyes and gripped her knees with her hands. Slowly, her body began to change and she felt herself become lighter and lighter, until she could no longer feel the floor beneath her feet or the wall her back was pinned up against. She stretched out with her limbless, newly formed hands and flexed her clawed fingers experimentally, staring at them intently as she concentrated on making herself invisible. All that would remain would be the occasional flash of violet out of the corner of a perceptive trainer's eye. Even then, nobody would think anything odd of a Haunter floating about in a place so full of Pokemon and their trainers.

She glanced back down at the six pokeballs that laid scattered on the off-white linoleum tiles below. Phonos was designed to be able to at least create illusions of her clothes on her human forms if necessity called for it, but she couldn't do anything to return the Pokemon home or anything. She slipped through the thin door and scouted the area cautiously, her entire immaterial body shuddering and shaking, and she felt as if her entire body was pulsing and beating at a rapid rate. She didn't know why…but she was terrified. She had never been out in the world stretching endlessly around her before. This had been a bad idea. She wasn't perfect, like Dad thought. She…she had a soul. And she was too scared to even hold a conversation with some pitiful young boy, she was too scared to step out the cubicle and make some sort of excuse for her behaviour. Say she simply needed the toilet, or remembered she needed to register for a deadline. Calvin would have...taken it all in stride. The passive boy wouldn't have questioned further or demanded to know the whys and hows; he would have just accepted that this was the way Phonos worked.

She didn't know why, but this knowledge made her want to sob and scream like nothing she had ever known in the ten years of her strange life. She withdrew into the cubicle and, breathing heavily and loudly despite the fact in this form she didn't need to breathe at all if she didn't want to, tried to consider what her next move should be. She hated ghost forms, despite their convenience. There was nothing further from humanity than a ghost Pokemon, they didn't breathe, they didn't have beating hearts and she felt as if every time she used such a form she was pulling herself further and further away from her goal of become human – the one thing she wanted more than anything else.

She stretched out her clawed hands as they became tangible again and scooped up the pokeball in her wide, invisible hands. She no idea which Pokemon were which now, but she couldn't exactly just leave them on the floor for goodness knows how long. Biting her long tongue between her jagged teeth, she tried to decide what in the hell she was supposed to do with these. Her head was still spinning and her thoughts seemed to be going at light speed, too fast to decipher and too numerous to pick from. Not knowing what else she could do, she slipped out from above the cubicle door and pushed the bathroom door open with a cautious Night Shade.

There was nobody about, but apprehension and fear still had a steely vice-like grip around her. The realisation was hitting her hard and as clear as day – she was in a world completely to alien to her own now. She was walking amongst the monsters from the nightmares she used to have, and they were somehow more intimidating and frightening than the toothy, hungry monsters from her childhood dreams.

Speedily and almost deliriously, Phonos propelled herself across through the hallways, blasting doors open with Night Shades and hoping that no humans would look to see six owner-less Pokeballs that were whizzing through the air at blinding speed, supported by seemingly nothing.

Even when she ended up floating over the heads of the humans, who looked and stared in surprise, Phonos couldn't stop. She couldn't think clearly and all was left was to run and hit off the walls. Down below her, she saw Calvin leaning across the information desk, asking the woman behind it about something.

She thought she caught Annie's name being said, but before she had a chance to think she had already blasted open the door into another hallway and was rushing down it, feeling as if all the humans that had been in that room were chasing after her now, looming high and dark, reading to tear this false creature limb from limb, laughing at her pathetic state.

Stop it, Phonos informed herself, trying to keep her mind from the paranoia that seemed to be rising around her like suffocating walls of endless stone.

"Where in the _hell _am I going?" Phonos said aloud, her voice quivering and thin; she felt a stab of disgust by her own use of a swear word but was not entirely surprised by it, when she was in this state at least.

Her mind was a blur, and it felt as if somebody had set fireworks off on the inside of her skull, making everything so impossibly bright and loud, dizzying and confusing, alien and just plain inhuman. There was nothing that could stop her, she felt as if all she wanted to do was drop down and scream, scream until there wasn't enough in her to scream any more. Everything seemed dark and out of focus. There wasn't enough room to breathe, she was sure. The hallways seemed to be getting tighter around her and the walls were thick, tall, imposing and utterly inescapable.

Light, dark, light, dark. Freezing, burning, freezing, burning. Perfect, failure, perfect, failure. A thousand contradictions jumping about in a dizzying, sickening shrieking of fear inside her mind, and she felt helpless and small, not knowing why she was panicking so deeply and unable to even trace the source. All she knew was that she wanted to go home. She wanted to see Mum and Dad again, and for a confusing instant she didn't care that didn't love her, didn't see her as she saw them, all she wanted was the familiarity, the comfort, the knowledge of knowing where she was going and what was going on – she didn't care that home to her was isolation, was training every day and starving for her own foul behaviour, that the familiar was the acidic smell of lab coats and things so sterile and clean they were unnerving, as well as the disturbing experiments being performed behind nearly ever door - all she wanted was her home. To feel safe as she could.

Only the crack of metal against plastic made her slow and stop. She looked down and saw that the Pokeballs that she had been carrying to god knows where, had dropped from her hands and to the floor. One was shaking with tremendous velocity and spinning in the spot. It was this, oddly, that made her stop and forced the world to come back into focus. The concern for another making her own demons wait, made them pause and made the world stop spinning out of her control. She needed to calm down; Phonos still felt ready to cry, but it was a steady sort of fear, controllable for however forceful and potent it may be.

She noticed that her hands were fully-formed again, and she was completely visible and tangible. Counting herself lucky that nobody was around, she reached forward with one clawed finger…

With a sudden, deafening crack, the pokeball burst open, the light singeing with unusual heat. That wasn't what she noticed first. The light was a grisly, bloody red. As the flickering, flaring light stilled, the sleek form of an Espeon formed, lying limply on her side.

A strangled noise of shock burst from her mouth. The light filtering down from the high, barred windows of the league building burned across the Espeon's still, beautiful body. Every strand of lavender fur in place, eyes closed in a serene manner that, were she not able to guess what had happened, would have only implied the slender psychic Pokemon was sleeping. Yet there was the mouth twisted in pain, the limbs that looked as if she had frozen mid-run, and the tail, looking as if it had been singed at the tips and pulled as taut as possible by some cruel, unthinking child – her.

She reached out and touched the Espeon, feeling her body slip slowly back into her ten-year-old, human form. The fur felt light and soft beneath her slender fingers, and the body was warm, but completely immobile and growing colder and colder beneath her finger-tips. Dropping to her knees, her racing mind slowed to a complete standstill.

She had killed the Espeon.


	6. Gryllus

**Chapter VI  
Gryllus**

Phonos' first mission had been an absolute disaster, and she knew it. In the records held by her Mum, the death of 196B was coldly listed as a foolish accident of subject V-Twenty. Phonos hadn't fully understood what had happened until she read the reports, having been asked to sign and date the papers by an indifferent, preoccupied Mum and forced to by a viciously furious, aggressive Dad. Apparently her little panic attack had been caught by the psychic Pokemon, and the fact that she was in a ghost form at the time didn't lessen the effects. And since it was such a powerful Espeon with strong telepathy abilities, the potent and dangerous combination of the brutal powers of herself, the sheer panic and loss of control and the ghost energy being channelled straight from her palms, it wasn't surprising in the least that the Pokemon had died.

The punishment she received did not seem enough to her. She thought, and had she been brave enough, would have requested, that she should be terminated. She deserved the fate the Espeon had. She understood death thoroughly; she fully comprehended what it all meant. They had taught her in the world of death; let her known from a very early age that when people died, they never came back. They were gone, their lives unfulfilled and any time wasted, wasted and never to come back again. Mum had done it to try and see how human her soul was, if her sapience was at the level to truly comprehend death and feel as deeply as a human would about it. Her mother used to go as far as to show her experiments that were dying, or things that had gone wrong and needed to be killed for mercy, testing the waters to see if she could feel anything about euthanasia. Dad always protested this, not for concern over her well-being or emotions, but because he didn't want his perfect design tainted and given opinions and knowing right from wrong. To him, his weapon having an incomplete, child-like view of death was better than her having a sense of morality. He thought it would weaken her.

Phonos had understood death deeply, and it had always pained her to watch them die right in front of her eyes, but it was a completely different matter when she had been the catalyst of that poor creature's death, intentional or not.

Yet for all of what she said, of how she wanted herself to be punished for her misbehaviour and stupidity, they had overlooked the incident as just a glitch in her system, and simply required that they do more monitoring and editing to her. They weren't about to flush what had been over a decade of extensive research, experimentation and failed attempts down the drain for her mistake, and they were bitterly determined to keep their precious victory, subject V-Twenty, alive.

For a several years Phonos existed only to do the most menial and mind-numbing tasks around the laboratory. She was the slave of every worker there, and there wasn't the slimmest chance that she didn't deserve it, in her mind she had panicked, panicked and lost control for all that she had been trained to do and as a result, another had died. She had refused to eat anything above what she needed to do her duties around the lab, as a means of making sure she learned her lesson; that she would never begin to indulge herself and let herself forget what her childishness had caused.

After a while, she began to do missions again, but this time Phonos was careful to try to feel as little as she possibly could. They were all rather simple, and all of them involved her being a Pokemon the entire time, since the scientists believed that going out into the real world in human form was what had caused her panic attack.

She spent all of her time in the laboratory in her human form, simply enjoying the peace and privacy that came with her isolation. She often transformed to entertain herself, trying different human forms, seeing how far she could push herself. Since neither Mum nor Dad had been reported her activity and neither had complained, she presumed that this must be one thing that she's doing right, so she did it all the more. She hated simply sitting and feeling useless, like a huge liability and waste of the Institute's funds and space. Yet when they did not have any jobs for her to do, all she could do was attempt to preoccupy her mind as best as she could.

As she was quietly experimenting, the TV screen – one that her father had placed there soon after both her parents became too busy to talk to her personally – burst into life and the image of a boy she had never seen before appeared on the screen, his face hidden by thick, dark sunglasses and shaggy black hair falling down to his shoulders.

"Subject V-Twenty. V-Twenty, Dr Lester would like to see you in room 108 for a mission briefing," he said, his voice flat, monotone and sounding completely bored. Phonos stood up with a low, submissive nod even though the boy couldn't see it and carefully transformed her body back into its normal human form.

She strode out the room at a fast, steady pace and wondered what job her father had for her, pleased despite herself that Dad was calling for her personally, a rare thing indeed – considering most of the time, she was simply picked for tasks and missions by scientists she didn't know.

She walked through the hallway, garnering the conventional stares and mutterings from everybody she had passed. She had grown accustomed to this by now, and it was something she barely noticed. She was too excited to pay them any heed, struggling to keep her pace even, steady and efficient as opposed to stumbling, rushed and eager.

The guttural sound of the door screeching open pierced her ears as she entered room 108, seeing her father lounging idly on a chair, his fingertips resting together and his elbows on the thick, mahogany desk before him. He looked at her when she walked in, eyes intimidating and full of authority, and watched her as she strode along and took a seat. Next to her, the slim, dark-haired form of Annie sat, looking as pristine as usual. The freckled girl didn't even look at her self-proclaimed sister when she took a seat, but her mouth was twisted into an ugly scowl that told Phonos she wasn't entirely welcome.

Dad remained silent until the boy Phonos has seen on the TV screen before walked in, looking very scruffy when compared to the two well-kept girls. He swung his legs up as he sat down and pressed his knees to his chin, staring right past Dad and to the wal through his round sunglasses fearlessly. Despite herself, Phonos felt a prickle of rage at the boy's impudent, defiant stare. He looked only a few years older than her, and his expression was one filled with impatience, and with no respect. She had to refrain herself from biting her lip in fury.

"So Annie," her father said, his lips barely moving as he spoke, "You are truly determined to take this mission?"

The dark haired boy seemed rather bewildered that he was ignoring the other two occupants of the room, adjusting his sunglasses in surprise. Phonos simply sat and waited patiently, she hadn't expected to have been addressed right away. She could not understand this boy; there was no justification for disrespect towards her father, none at all.

Annie nodded; her lips stiff and her arms folded tightly, her expression obstinate and unmovable. Staring at her father with such a fierce gaze, she was the very picture of stubbornness. Dad sighed and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head and running a hand through his thinning hair.

"Unbelievable. You won't be convinced to change your mind, I assume?" Dad said wearily, staring at his daughter, thick eyebrows knitted together in concern and one hand resting loosely against his gaunt cheeks. Annie didn't respond, and Dad simply continued, "You are not trained enough. Your flaws are obvious, you are little other than a child and you are simply a trainer. I assure you, it will not be as easy as you presume it to be."

Raw pain was evident in Annie expression; raw pain and stony, unyielding resentment. Startled by the pure emotion on Annie's face, Phonos looked away. Suddenly, she felt as if she was intruding on something deep and personal, and opted to stare as hard as she could at the colourless grey carpet under her feet.

"Dad, I'm twenty-one and have been training here for years," she said, lifting her head to meet his eyes with a determined and unmovable gaze, "I located it. I am going to be the one who catches it. I refuse to let this mission go to anybody else…and I refuse to _share_ it with anybody else either." She paused to send rude, furious glances at the two people standing on either side of her. The boy simply pushed his sunglasses further up his face, perhaps to cover his expression, and Phonos only nodded in vague agreement, which seemed to only provoke Annie's ire further.

"That thing," she said, gesturing bluntly in Phonos' direction, "Has been on more missions than me. Do you not remember what a disaster first mission you dispatched it on was? And five years after that, you're still assigning it to missions and jobs. And you won't even trust your own daughter?"

Dad simply stared from the top of his clasped hands, looking tired of the rather one-sided argument taking place. Phonos suddenly felt as if something was inside her chest tearing her to pieces from the inside-out with its claws at her speech – Annie, her elder sister, truly was disgusted and repulsed by her.

"I can catch Mewtwo, Dad. I'm the most fitting for the job. Just send me. Sending too many will alert Mewtwo to our presence and he'll simply teleport away before I can get close. I _can_ do this," she said, hissing the words through gritted teeth.

"I refuse to let you go on your own," Dad said flatly, and Phonos knew in that instant that even if Annie pleaded from dusk until dawn, she wouldn't be allowed to go by herself. Even when dealing with his real daughter, Dad was firm and resolute when he took that tone.

Annie seemed to realise this and with a sigh, slumped back in her chair, taking a despairing glance at the people around her who were, presumably, to be her team-mates throughout the mission. She did not look pleased at the prospect of working alongside either of them.

"Why these two exactly?" Annie asked petulantly, unafraid of showing the venom and irritation in her voice. Phonos forced herself to keep stiffly unemotional and still, and the unknown boy was looking away, as if the entire thing was boring him to death.

"V-Twenty here has had experience in several different combat situations, and is familiar with you and your quirks. There's also the fact it's out most powerful successful specimen thus far, and it would be foolish for you not to accept it," Dad continued, gesturing towards Phonos with one hand. Though she knew that it made her look foolish and arrogant, her chest swelled with pride at the compliment – she was the most powerful specimen and Dad trusted her to look after his beloved daughter.

"And this one?" Annie asked, gesturing towards the dark, shaggy-haired boy to her right, "What function does this one serve?"

"Don't call me this one," the boy interrupted coolly, his voice soft, but at the same time it held the same powerful authority that Dad's did, even without her father's booming voice and powerful lungs. It was this, if anything, that caught Phonos off-guard about the stranger.

Annie simply glared at him and shrugged it off, turning her attention back at her father.

"He is one of our many workers; real name, Craig; code name, Gryllus. He is proficient in psychic combat, having ESP abilities himself, such as the ability to locate particular auras and other such useful skills. Besides this, he has certain abilities with negotiation and reasoning that may come in handy. It may be best to sway Mewtwo over to our side, rather than seal him inside a pokeball," Dad replied.

"I don't particularly like the codename crap. Just call me Craig," the boy said, continuing in that disturbing soft voice. That voice that made Dad, Annie and herself fall silent and look at him, hanging onto every syllable. Phonos couldn't help but find this little ability of his…incredibly disturbing. Could he control it? She hoped he could, and would stop it once they were out in the field.

Nobody should have more power than Mum or Dad. It was…weird. That, and frightening. Very frightening.

There was a gap of silence, as everybody paused, the last syllable of Craig's words still hanging in the air, seemingly waiting to confirm that he was, indeed, finished. After a few seconds, Dad cleared his throat and placed both of his hands palm-down on the surface of the table, surveying all three of the young people before him.

"Now, I don't want any mistakes here and I don't want to give Mewtwo a gap to escape in, but I want you all to get a good night's rest. I want you all to report to this room for exactly eight AM sharp. Annie and Craig, I want your Pokemon fully healed, your items stocked and your teams prepared for anything that might arise. V-Twenty, you _must_ have a good meal tonight to prepare yourself. You will be teleporting Annie, Craig and their Pokemon to Cerulean City when everything is ready."

With a nod in their direction and a shuffling of papers, the three assembled Institute workers knew they were dismissed. Phonos wordlessly bowed her head respectfully towards her Dad, who paid no heed to her, and left the room.

She could put it down to paranoia if she wanted, but she could swear that Craig was staring at her through those sunglasses when she left.


	7. Imperfection

**Chapter VII  
****Imperfection**

Phonos had never slept much, but the night before she left, she hadn't slept at all. She had closed her eyes, tried to use Rest, did her very hardest to follow through Dad's orders to get a good night's sleep but that night, but she couldn't sleep at all. Her head was swimming and for some reason, every cell in her body was shrieking in alarm. If she did not know it was illogical and silly, she may have said that she knew what was going to happen the day after that sleepless, restless night. Of course, she was really aware of no such thing. Though it was if there were parts of her that were trying to warn her, a klaxon ringing at the back of her mind and premature fears and doubts already taking root, digging their thorny claws in deep and hard.

The mission to capture Mewtwo was unlike anything she had faced before in her life, and Phonos quite reasonably decided that this was why sleep was persistently slipping away from her. It would only be herself, Craig and her sister that would go up to face him directly, and wandering into Kanto when you were from the Sinnoh district of the Institute was considered suicide. You'd be arrested without a second thought if you were discovered, and your face would be plastered all over the news. Phonos shuddered to think what they'd do to her Mum and Dad if they captured her and discovered what she was. She was something the Kantonians didn't approve of, she knew that much.

After what seemed like an eternal night, the florescent ceiling lights clicked on to symbolise the dawn, the sudden brightness almost burning out her retinas. It was impossible to tell the passage of time from the BIPG base under Veilstone, so her room had been equipped to turn the lights on and off at sunrise and sunset. It gave her a true sense of the passage of time that could not be given from the flashing numerals on the ever-present digital clock in the corner of her TV screen.

She sat up, pushing herself to her knees and rubbing her eyes. She would have to perform a few Recovers on herself to try and recuperate the sleep she had lost to her apprehensive insomnia.

Standing straight and tall, she looked down at herself, trying to carefully decide what clothing style would go unnoticed in Kanto. The usual clothes she formed for herself were usually based for Sinnoh missions, and Sinnoh fashion was rather extravagant when compared with Kanto. After some deliberation, she settled on a very plain T-shirt, skirt and cap combination before exiting.

She was over an hour early, but she very much doubted she would be able to relax unless she was heading to her father's room.

Too absorbed in her thoughts to react, Phonos suddenly felt herself be knocked aside and her shoulder hit the wall with sudden force. A familiar figure of a woman was speeding down the hallway ahead of her, her hands gripped into tight fists at her side and her blonde hair, which usually fell down her back in elegant waves, was messy and unkempt and her calm, beautiful face was pulled taut with frustration and stress.

Worry washed over Phonos as her mother stormed down the halls, barely taking notice of where she was going and her pace unusually uncontrolled and uneven. Had she done something to anger her? No, that couldn't be it. If Mum had noticed that Phonos had done something wrong, she would have been more direct.

She walked behind Mum, keeping a pace about even to her irregular, fast-paced stride and saw with a sinking feeling in her stomach, her go into Room 108.

Despite the fact her skin was crawling and cold with guilt at the mere thought of it, Phonos slunk up towards the door and pressed herself against it, hearing voices on the other side. The frustrated, barely contained voice of her mother and the cold, impertinent voice of her father; both voices were coated in acid and dripped animosity from every syllable spoken.

"You think you're very smart, don't you?" Mum said, voice reaching an angry high-pitched tone Phonos had never, ever heard before.

"I think that I can improve on what Team Rocket did. Their flaw with Mewtwo was the imperfect cloning process," Dad responded, making Phonos have to strain her ears with his low, subdued tones, "If we use the Bane cloning method, we can have that powerful Pokemon Team Rocket wanted and I can have them sold to all the trainers out there who want their own powerful fighting machine."

"Sell it, damnit, Dr Lester? _Sell it? _This is your grand scheme; this is what you're risking your daughter's life and my specimen on, the ability to make a profit from some wannabe crime ring?" Mum's voice was lowering to a snarling, dangerous growl now. A quiet, rebellious voice at the back of her mind told her that Dad was being foolish and selfish, especially considering how ready he was to sacrifice his own daughter to achieve his own ends. Phonos pushed the thoughts away stubbornly, determined to hear nothing negative against her father's plans. She was sure he had to have more to him than simply, material greed – there was more to his calculated plans than the wish to advance his own financial situation.

"Part of it is down to money, as with anything. But what about the science? What about improving on what has already been done and advancing my own knowledge in ways that aren't possible with legal methods or tiptoeing around the edges," he said. A small gap of silence followed, before Mum spat out more unexpected words, each one lined with more anger and resentment than the last:

"To beat me?"

Dad chuckled and Phonos heard the squeak of his leather chair, and presumed he had leaned back on. She knew them well enough to picture the scene. The smug knowledge that he was right on his face, the defiant and righteous stance her mother and the sheer energy between them, enough to stun anybody into silence. For Phonos, this was a battle unparalleled by any she had fought in or seen – a fight between the two most powerful opposing forces in her life.

"Dr Tsume, will you stop being so arrogant? You presume because you apparently created an artificial soul that we all bow at your feet. I know that you didn't intend V-Twenty to be the way it is, and your attempts to cover up the flaws in your specimen are pathetic," Dad said coldly. Phonos almost winced at the words. For all that Dad had ever said about her being a powerful creation…she was still flawed, she still hadn't been created as perfectly as Dad had wished or Mum had drafted. There was a bang of hands meeting a hard surface at Dad's indefatigable words.

"My intentions were clear right from the start. If I hadn't intended to graft an artificial soul into V-Twenty, she never would have been born with one to begin with. You know as well as I do that the Bane method does not result in the presence of sapience or full sentience," she said angrily, evidently stung by Dad's cold, unfaltering words. Dad snorted in derision.

Phonos slumped back, pushing the voices away as she shuffled backwards across the tiles, the colour drained from her already pale cheeks and feeling shaky and uncertain. The conflict was twisting her stomach into horribly, sickly knots and brought bile to her throat. Her chest ached.

She knew that logically this meant one of them had to be wrong for the other to right…but Phonos couldn't process it at all. It made her head spin and the floor seemed to wobble beneath her, and her legs were still shaking as she got to her feet. If Mum was right…then she was perfect in her design, if imperfect as a weapon of the institute. If Dad was right…she was just imperfect, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that either of them could be wrong. There had to be some other way to explain it. There had to be something that she could believe about all this.

"You look frightened, V-twenty," a high, unfamiliar voice said. She inhaled in shock and glanced behind her to see the gangly form of Craig standing nearby, his black clothing only slightly different from what it had been yesterday and those round black sunglasses still perched atop his bony nose. His voice was different though. It was boisterous and loud, with a childish high-pitched tone to it and an almost sing-song quality. Very different from the low, entrancing voice he had used to get his few points across the previous day. Perhaps sensing her confusion from her expression, or, remembering what Dad had said yesterday about his ESP the other day, quite literally sensing the question forming in her mind, he continued on, "Oh yeah. The voice. My other voice I tend to just use when I'm….working. When I'm being "Gryllus" so to speak. This is my normal voice, so rest assured I'm not going to use any freakish psychic tricks on you."

Phonos had turned around to see him, and kept his eye as he spoke, but said nothing in response. Craig seemed to smirk at her for this and pushed his glasses up his nose and trying to flatten his wildly messy black hair, not even looking like he really cared that it was completely ineffective or that he even really intended it to work.

"You _are _allowed to speak you know," he said gently, the foolish, vapid grin still spread across his face. Phonos, ironically, only nodded to show that she understood. He laughed in an odd, barking manner and shook his head in incredulity.

"You experiment types. I'm glad I was human before I was an institute worker," he continued, seeming quite happy to continue on with his one-sided conversation as long as Phonos was willing to listen. Which, knowing Phonos' nature, would be a very long time, and he didn't seem entirely ignorant of this. Phonos couldn't help but wonder vaguely what the institute did to him to make him inhuman.

Without warning, he burst out laughing again and grabbed Phonos by the arm, pulling her into a slow walk down the hall. When she looked at the boy alarm, he simply waved his hand dismissively.

"They sound like they'll be debating a bit, and we shouldn't be here so early anyway," he said casually, "And I still am human. I just sold my human soul to them for some good work and a chance to use my talents in a way that wouldn't get me shoved alongside those pretentious psychic trainers. Oh don't tell me you're taking _that_ literally as well! It was a _metaphor_ V-Twenty. Jesus _Christ_."

Phonos was finding it very thoroughly disturbing that Craig was responding to her before she even had a chance to say anything, but the boy didn't seem like he would be steered away from probing into her mind any time soon. He could certainly sense her discomfort if he could read that far in, and that didn't seem perturb him at all.

His only acknowledgement of her unease was a short snort of laughter, ruffling her hair roughly and a quiet mumbling of 'Oh you'll get used to it'.

"Okay, so your real name is…what…Phonos, I'm getting? Sorry, getting proper words out of somebody's head is harder than just getting concepts or emotions," he asked. She looked up at the taller boy in surprise – nobody addressed her as Phonos. Few people even knew that she would even respond to the name. Swallowing, she nodded and Craig grinned, apparently pleased he had managed to pluck it from her mind.

"Phonos, huh? Well, I already told you I don't like the codename crap so don't expect me to be calling you V-Twenty anymore," he said, rolling up his sleeves, which were two long and came up to the base of his fingers for some odd reason, to look at the leather watch around his wrist.

"Right, we better walk back up to the door now. I'm sure Dr Tsume and Dr Lester will be done slapping at each other now and Little Princess Lester will be there as well," he said and, before she could control herself, anger flared inside Phonos, hot and singeing at the insult to her artificial family.

Craig swiftly and suddenly snapped his hand away from her shoulder as if he had just been stung by some monstrous bug Pokemon. She gave him an unforgiving stare and he smiled bleakly in apology. In a huge act of defiance that only that sort of insult could prompt, Phonos strode on ahead of him, heading to room 108 without him.

She heard Craig tut as his footsteps, soft and steady, followed her through the hallways and into the spacious office of her father. Annie already stood there, fully equipped with a backpack slung over her slender shoulders and her hands on her wide hips, an impatient, brazen expression twisting the features of her freckled face. Craig made a small noise of irritation as her eyes drilled into the pair of them as they walked through the door, Phonos in her usual, controlled mimicry of her Mum and Craig in a lazy, slouching swagger.

"Right, now we are all assembled. V-Twenty, assume the form of an Abra and Teleport yourself and the other two to Cerulean City in Kanto. I have a visual aid if you require it," her Dad commanded, standing up and walking around to the other side of the desk, one hand covering his mouth.

Phonos nodded and transformed without a hitch, reaching out with her amber, clawed hands and rested them on Annie and Craig. Teleporting to somewhere she had never been herself was difficult, but it was something Phonos was capable of.

She was, after all, her mother's design.


	8. Search

**Chapter VIII  
Search**

Cerulean City was bright, cheerfully loud and sweltering under the singeing sun above. The unfamiliar cry of the Pidgey soaring in the brilliant blue skies above echoed in Phonos' sensitive Abra ears as she checked that Craig and Annie had arrived unharmed. Whilst Craig seemed contemplative but generally calm, Annie looked slightly spaced-out and bemused, but the young girl quickly shook it off and returned to her usual state. Phonos felt a slight, unusual tingle of pride at having accomplished something a normal Abra could not, and Craig looked at her in surprise, a broad smirk cracking across his bony features. Embarrassed, Phonos attempted to push back the feelings of arrogant pleasure swelling in her chest and Craig frowned, raising an eyebrow but shrugging and turning away from the flustered Abra.

"Alright, where is this all happening?" he asked, clapping and rubbing his hands together eagerly. Annie scowled disapprovingly at him.

"You don't even know that much?" she said wearily, clearly still unhappy with her father's arrangements for the mission.

"Not at all!" Craig responded chirpily, his stance proud and his hands on his hips. Annie sighed in a way that reminded Phonos very strongly of Dad and indicated an unusual outcrop of rock and stone jutting out of the water up near the bridge.

Craig whistled appreciatively.

"Cerulean Cave? Lots of strong Pokemon in there," he said, "You got Kanto badges to get yourself in with?"

"Of course I do," Annie snapped.

"Alright, alright, chill. Women, eh?" he said, looking down at Phonos, nudging the waiting Abra gently with his foot. Phonos wasn't at all amused by the bizarre banter. She could not understand what on earth the boy was doing, talking to her sister in such an impertinent, tactless voice. Phonos didn't think she would ever get used to the lenient way in which Craig addressed everybody, neither when his voice was normal nor in that low, mystical tone he used to coerce and induce others into doing what he wanted them to do. Both of the ways he spoke were fearless and so very uninhibited that she was very sure it would always remain an enigma to her.

"Hmph. Fine. Both of you, follow me," she said huffily. They both complied, Phonos transforming into a Raticate for ease, as anybody who noticed would simply presume she was a Ditto that belonged to either Annie or Craig.

"She has no idea what she's getting into. I can only hope she's not an arse on that battlefield as well," Craig commented with an enigmatic grin. Of course, this comment was completely lost on Phonos, who was far too preoccupied with trying to figure out what an 'arse' was to be angry at Craig insulting her big sister yet again. At this, Craig simply smiled and ruffled the fur on her head, which only served to make her even more confused.

Even in the light of Phonos' Flash attack, Cerulean Cave remained dark and forbidding. Golbat of a monstrous size hung from the ceiling, their thick, leathery wings wrapped around their flat bodies. Flashes of electricity and what Phonos recognized as psychic energy occasionally illuminated their path better than Phonos had, but other than that, the cave was still; silent except for the sound of running water and the soft breathing of the three explorers.

As Phonos walked alongside Craig, she noticed something. His breathing was strange and irregular and he was grasping at the air with his hands, as if trying to seize a hold of something. Something intangible – was it the psychic energy in this cave? Phonos could feel the energy buzzing against her mind, but it was faint and almost completely inaudible – she guessed the fact she was in the form of a Volbeat was stifling her extrasensory abilities.

"Damnit!" he barked suddenly, prompting both Annie and Phonos to jump and stare at him. His usual arrogantly calm expression had become one of enraged frustration, his eyes dark and narrowed behind his sunglasses, which were slipping unchecked down his nose.

"What?" Annie said, not looking at all impressed with Craig's unexplained outburst. The boy walked unsteadily towards the cave wall, placing both his palms on the rock, fingers sprawled and open. An almost unnoticeable webbing of pale blue light appeared between his fingers, pushing through the rock face and trickling between the stones like water. Phonos raised an eyebrow, mystified as Craig screwed up his face in concentration, an uncharacteristic look of vexation evident on his face.

"It's hard to focus here," Craig said through gritted teeth, pulling his hands away from the rock, his palms sweaty and fingers shaking, "There's so much energy bouncing about, I can't tell what energy signature belongs to Mewtwo. Phonos!" He said suddenly, his eyes suddenly wide as an epiphany swept over him, "Transform into Mewtwo."

Annie was staring with contempt at Craig's use of her chosen name and Phonos shifted uncomfortably, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. She certainly didn't want Annie thinking she was foolish – it was already hard enough to prove herself to the girl, and if she wanted to be worthy of calling herself Annie's little sister she needed to be ideal…and without this worrisome embarrassment.

"It's…rather difficult to transform into a Pokemon categorised as a legendary, sir," she replied, aware that both Annie and Craig were staring at her intently, "And I will still have my own energy signature even after transforming, sir. Sir, I don't mean to be rude, sir, but…I think this flaw is planned – wait no…that's not right - I'm sorry sir!"

"Hey you spoke! Good for you," Craig said with a very high level of amusement in his voice, smirking at Phonos' nervous stuttering as she tried to get her own opinions across, which was something she did incredibly rarely and Phonos found, to her shame, that was shaking from even trying it, "Just do it, please. Trust me. And don't call me sir."

"Alright, I'm sorry to have questioned you si – it was foolish and I apologise for my immaturity," she said incredibly quickly, only just catching herself in time to stop another sir slipping out of her mouth. Craig sniggered, the corner of his lip twitching as she apologised. Annie rolled her eyes and leaned against a wall, putting both hands behind her head.

Phonos breathed in deeply and gently stretched her Volbeat body out, feeling the familiar tug on her skin as her body transformed, her insides pumping furiously to keep up with the sudden, drastic change. As her mind became sharper, she felt the cave all around her. She felt the pulses of energy coming from Craig, and then the indistinguishable noise of power and energy all around her, radiating from every direction with the force of a Rhyhorn slamming into her stomach. Her knees almost buckled beneath her at the sheer for of all the psychic energy around her, and it was small wonder that Mewtwo's energy signature was lost to Craig.

"Pretty painful, isn't it?" Craig asked grimly, and only then did Phonos notice the odd change in his voice; it had become hoarse like a person speaking through gritted teeth, the voice of somebody trying not shriek in agony. Phonos could only nod as her body finished transforming into the tall, imposing form of Mewtwo.

Craig looked her up and down appraisingly, looking thoughtfully before he reached up with his skinny arms and placed his bony fingers on her forehead, having to stretch his body and stand on his tip-toes to reach.

"Alright, try to relax and block it all out," he said, his voice suddenly gaining that low, hypnotic quality that made Phonos very aware that she couldn't disobey if she tried, "I can get a rough idea from this at least. Maybe not your energy signature, but your energy levels should be reminiscent of Mewtwo and maybe I can try something new…yes…Ditto change their DNA with each reconstruction - I know that much. A long shot…yeah."

A strange entity pushed into her mind as Craig spoke, and everything Phonos was seeing with her eyes suddenly slipped away from her view, as if there had been nothing there to begin with. Instead, she could feel everything around her tenfold. The cave around her was alive with thoughts and voices; the emotions of plenty of different Pokemon shrieked around her, like static from a television, only sharp and painful – more so than she had experienced as Mewtwo.

Annie's energy was low and jumping around with impatience and then…she could feel her own energy. Powerful, but quiet and frightened, like she was a Dialga hiding in a Sentret's warren. What was Phonos so afraid of? She didn't understand…but then there was a lot she didn't understand all of a sudden. It was like a consciousness she had lost, something that had slipped into an afterlife and became forgotten, a distant dream where she was somebody else. Somebody scared, somebody lonely, somebody weak.

What was happening? Her knees shook unsteadily as her mind tried to take in all the emotions around her, the impatience, the joy, the elation, the exhaustion, the contentment, the anger, the sorrow, the fury, the jealousy…a million different things from a million different sources. The breadth of the emotions of all the creatures in the cave was almost amazing, breathtaking even. Beautiful.

But then she steadied, and she tried to think, still uneasy.

Craig? Where was Craig? In fact, where and who was she? She wanted to go home…wherever that may be.

_Well. That didn't work._

Huh?

Suddenly, everything burst into colour and light around her and she was staring at Craig, who had pulled his hands away from her head and had them folded across his chest.

"I made a mistake," he said briefly, sounding slightly exasperated, "I seemed to have pulled you into my own mind for a bit there."

Phonos looked down at her body mutely, as it slowly dawned on her. She was Phonos and for a minute…she hadn't been. But she had seen herself; she had seen her own power and her own obvious, desperate fear. She has seen more about herself than she'd really wanted to know through his eyes. The eyes that couldn't even see. She looked up at Craig, and noticed the way he treaded so slowly, the way all the psychic energy was making him visibly on edge, making him reach out with his hands whilst he walked and feel the ground beneath his feet more carefully with each passing step. But from the usual way he walked, with his long, confident strides and inelegant slouching swagger, Phonos never would have guessed…

"But, still, the same effect!" Craig said cheerfully, his voice high and melodic again and he clapped his hands together as a smile broke across his face, "I at least have an idea of what I'm looking for now."

"Fabulous," Annie commented sardonically, looking about ready to start screaming and stomping the ground out of sheer impatience, "Can we get a move on now? We've wasted far too much time. If you two keep doing these things, Mewtwo may very well become aware we're here and teleport out, or worse, get the jump on us. We have to be stealthy."

Phonos glared at Craig as he moved his mouth along mockingly to Annie's words, tongue lolling about in an exaggerated manner in his mouth – Annie was making a lot of sense. Who was to say that Mewtwo, as powerful psychic as he was, wasn't able to tell of new intruders through telekinesis? They were just relying on the psychic noise to block them out but Phonos didn't think Craig's power or her own mimicry could match up to Mewtwo's full abilities.

Craig suddenly sighed and held his hands up defensively in surrender.

"Alright, alright. I wish you two would be less serious. I mean jeez. Bet you guys are fun at parties," he said, walking past Annie and feeling through the air with his hands, looking like a somewhat bizarre mime. Annie tutted and walked along after him.

Phonos could understand what was going on with Craig right then, and she almost opened her mouth to question him about it, but she decided to just take the passive route and focus on her mission. After all, it was none of her business.

Without another word, she transformed back into a Volbeat and illuminated the cave again, following the other two in her team obediently.

The tunnels seemed to stretch on for eternity, and the lack of natural light didn't help. Phonos could only see so far before the grey stone and rubble disappeared into sheer blackness again, so when they reached an open, area section of the cave, Phonos just had to breathe a sigh of relief. The deep crevices of murky water were a welcome change from the barren landscape, and Phonos could see various fish Pokemon darting around in the water, scattering as their shadows slashed across the surface of the pools. For some odd reason, this calmed her.

"Mewtwo's deeper underground," Craig said, who had crouched down to feel the rock beneath him with his hands, stroking his fingertips across the jagged stone in wide circles. Phonos nodded, looking around the cave. The Pokemon were keeping their distance, but the Repels they had used couldn't last much longer and soon they'd have to start fighting if they couldn't find Mewtwo fast.

"How do we get down then?" Annie said, sounding business-like and austere – she no longer cared for either of her partners, positively or negatively, and just wanted to get her job done. Or at least, that was what Phonos could understand from the young woman.

Craig only got to his feet, shrugging and acting as if she had never asked the question to begin with.

"We swim, I suppose," he said, gesturing vaguely towards the body of water nearby. Annie nodded and folded her arms across her chest, a thoughtfully expression passing over her face.

"This cave was originally a tourist spot for trainers – it got disbanded when a few idiots with only one or two gym badges to their name were charging in here and getting themselves killed by the wild Pokemon. So, it's been split into floors through unnatural means, hence the presence of water on multiple floors," she said swiftly, her tone become more and more reminiscent of Dad's as she continued, "The waters been coming in over time and has spread to the lower floors so there must be fissures or holes under the water. Something to that effect anyway."

Annie suddenly look at Phonos, as if she had never seen the other girl before, and Craig slowly turned to her as well.

"So!" Craig said, rubbing his hands together and grinning eagerly, "What's your favourite water-type Pokemon, Pho?"

Phonos looked across at the water and nodded, understanding what they were implying but she was hardly going to do anything with direct orders.

"I prefer taking on the form of a Lanturn for a water form, sir," she said, not able to catch herself before the sir slipped from between her lips that time. Craig howled with laughter and Annie clicked her tongue with irritation.

"You!" Craig said between barking laughs, shaking his head in disbelief, "You are an absolute legend."

Annie clicked her fingers to catch Craig's attention, looking as if she'd want nothing more than to throw the vociferous boy into the water and be done with it.

"V-Twenty, transform into a Pokemon that can breathe underwater, dive under the water and find a way to the lower floors," she instructed, her voice clear and loud, "Go to the lower floors and find an appropriate place where we could fit Mewtwo from safely. Then teleport back here to report it back to me. Understood?"

"Yes madam," Phonos said, fluttering above the water whilst still in her Volbeat form and beginning to transform. Craig made a small noise of disgust, and Annie mumbled something angrily to him, sounding quite frustrated.

Phonos, quite irritated at herself for eavesdropping, ignored this and transformed as quickly as she could push herself, before she dropped and landed in the cold water with a splash.

The water surged through her newly formed gills and the bobbing, yellow light hanging in front of her eyes cleared the water. Beneath the surface, Phonos could feel the push and pull of the water around her, gentle but definitely present. As she swum lower, there was an increase in the strength of the unidentified forces – there was definitely somewhere where the water was being drained away. She couldn't tell where it was, but she decided to be diplomatic and simply swim deeper in, to any areas the other Pokemon were deliberately avoiding. They wouldn't want to be sucked under.

Without warning, a powerful blue body surged through the water towards her and Phonos darted aside as the long, strong form of a Gyarados streaked past, all the beast's jagged fins clinging to it's snake-like body. The Pokemon gnashed its vicious looking fangs in frustration and took another dive for the small lantern, jaws reaching wide and trying to snap up the smaller Pokemon.

Phonos spun out the water and slammed into the Gyarados' side, hardly making any impact against the gigantic Pokemon, before she let loose a surge of electricity from her body that crashed into the Gyarados and sent all he Pokemon around her scattering, leaving a huge, empty radius of water about her.

Swimming lower and faster, being able to go at a more efficient rate without interruption, the underwater tides grew strong and Phonos swum along the currents to a long, thin fissure in the ground, stretching across the rocks and being draining the area around it steadily of water. She hovered in the water near it, not wanting to be pulled in and stuck.

She transformed into a Luvdisc as a sudden idea came over her and allowed herself to be pulled in by the water, pulling in all her breath. Luvdisc were almost completely flat as is, and perhaps she could find a part of the fissure that wasn't too jagged as to stop her.

She was suddenly surrounded by moving, crashing water as she slipped through the crack and into the floor below. It was colder down here, and the frigid air suddenly striking her wet scales made Phonos want to transform again, but with a surge of effort, she controlled herself.

The psychic energy…it was stronger here. As she fell into the water below, she saw a glance of a figure sitting further across, on a rocky island surrounded by the murky water. A mighty grey creature sat on a platform of land, eyes closed and violet tail wound around his thin body. Phonos almost milled about to be awed by the awesome psychic power radiating from the creature. Amongst all that power, there seemed to be a trace of something else. Sadness, frustration, loneliness?

She didn't have time to question it.

Still bobbing in the water, she transformed into an Abra and vanished to the above floor.


	9. Extinguish

**Chapter IX  
****Extinguish**

"Spider Web, Toxin!" Annie commanded, and the Ariados spat a thick, silky string from his mouth which hit Mewtwo before the powerful Pokemon could react. So, Mewtwo couldn't run away or teleport from the intruders. Annie had had this all planned out from the start, really, Phonos thought as she skirted around Mewtwo, her paws sore against the rough, rocky terrain and her tail and ears high. Annie had commanded that she take the form of an Umbreon to begin with, for the type advantage.

"We only wish for you to come help us," Craig said, his voice low and entrancing. The boy ventured closer to the tall feline, his movements smooth and almost serpentine and, for a minute, the boy barely looked human.

The feline glared at the trainers and Pokemon surrounding him, violet, powerful tail swishing through the air and hands half-raised, ready to attack with all his might should any of them dare show hostility. The Pokemon didn't seem incredibly fond of being spat at by the large arachnid, and kept throwing hateful, irritated glances in the crimson-coloured spider's direction.

Phonos, even with the usual completely stifling barriers of her dark type around her, could sense the well of psychic energy in Mewtwo. She had to wonder at how long it had been since the man-made Pokemon had went to the surface, how long since he had last faced humans in battle. Phonos hadn't heard of anybody facing off against Mewtwo.

Then again, perhaps those who did weren't in any fit state to tell the tale. Cold fear ran through her at the thought and suddenly the threat seemed real, people could die here. Annie could die here.

She pushed the thought aside. She didn't want to think about that. Annie was infallible. She looked across at Craig. Was he as perfect? She knew that he wasn't but…something inside her didn't want him to die, despite the cold logic that made it all the more probable. She didn't like it – Craig wasn't somebody she should concern herself with, but the idea of his spirit leaving forever, his body being drained of all it's life…it was something she did not ever want to happen. Her own death? She couldn't die, not when she still had her mission to do. She knew that much.

"We come from a group and wish for you to become part of that group," Craig continued, his voice soft and accommodating. Were Mewtwo a human, he would be well under Craig's spell by now, but Mewtwo's stance was still proud and his purple eyes were still flaring with anger and defiance.

Mewtwo had no family to defend, yet he still stood tall and imposing, as if he were standing in front of a whole multitude of things to fight for. Pity clawed at Phonos' stomach and her throat closed up – all the Mewtwo had to hang to was this empty cave, where not even the most clueless Zubat dared venture near him. Suddenly, she felt reluctant to fight this Pokemon if Craig couldn't convince him. Phonos couldn't imagine the sort of loneliness he felt, never having anything other than himself to fight and work for.

"We only offer our support. You will find working for the Bane Institute pleasurable and profitable," Craig said, smiling serenely. When Phonos watched him work whilst outside of his influence, he looked incredibly creepy rather than convincing or comforting.

Without warning, Mewtwo swung his long arms around and sent a wave of black energy surging out towards them. Craig threw up a barrier just in time and Toxin defended Annie before the wave could get anywhere near her. Immune friom the attack, Phonos rushed up and leapt at Mewtwo's exposed back, her previous hesitation forgotten in her panic, and sank her jaws into the feline's angular shoulder.

Mewtwo shook her off quickly and spun around; tailing smacking Annie's attacking Typhlosion aside as if it had been nothing at all and started charging a sea-blue ball of crackling energy between his fingers, throwing it wildly at Phonos.

Alarmed, she started to dash away but the sphere twisted its path to match the Umbreon's before slamming into her back and sent her hurtling across the air. Agony rushed through her body as she landed with a painful crack against the ground. Snarling angrily at herself, Phonos got to her paws shakily. Aura Sphere – Mewtwo was at the top of his game…it wouldn't be easy.

"Baron, use Shadow Claw!" Annie commanded, rushing around the fringes of the island to get a full scope of the battle, "Toxin, you stay with me and Kurai…use Bug Buzz! Nani, damnit! Return!"

The Typhlosion jumped to his feet and rushed towards Mewtwo as Phonos distracted him, forcing the Pokemon to focus his attention on deflecting the Confuse Rays. The bear-like Pokemon raised a yellow paw and slashed down, three knife-like claws bursting from his paw and cutting through the air and slashing across the Mewtwo's exposed back, leaving ghoulish purple burn marks on his back. Just as the Masquerain swooped down from above, buzzing noisily and slamming into the unprepared Pokemon multiple times in a row.

Yowling, Mewtwo threw his arms out and hurled all the attacking Pokemon aside with a burst of deafeningly loud psychic energy. Kurai flew across the room and slammed into a wall, the insect's red wings hanging limply and loosely from his back. With an explicit curse word, Annie returned the exhausted Masquerain to his pokeball in a ray of crimson light.

Baron landed on all fours and dashed towards Mewtwo again, his body bleeding and bruised and his navy fur on end with rage. The Typhlosion grabbed the Mewtwo's outstretched arm in his powerful jaws and bit down with all his might, drawing dark red blood from the pokemon's flesh.

Mewtwo grabbed Baron's head with his free hand and this time, a noiseless blast of orange energy burst from his fingers.

Phonos could only watch in horror as the light in fire pokemon's eyes faded, his jaws slackened and the powerful Pokemon fell to the floor with a horrible thump.

"Baron! Baron! Oh god Baron. Baron…the pokeball isn't working. Oh _shit_! No, no! Oh god! Baron! Baron! _Baron!_" Annie shrieked, trying to rush forward to where the lifeless Pokemon lay but Toxin forced her back aggressively. With her keen Umbreon ears, Phonos could just make out Toxin telling Annie she'd get herself killed like that and, despite the fact the human wouldn't even be able to understand the Ariados' words, Annie seemed to go still and limp, but still she shrieked and sobbed, a million different curses spat from her mouth and a million pleas with any gods or devils there were to bring him back. Toxin stood steady, keeping her upright as she sobbed into him, gripping onto the spider's abdomen for dear life. Phonos had never heard or seen Annie like that. Never heard Annie's voice so loud, never heard her voice shake that badly or seen the helpless tears rolling down her suddenly pale cheeks. The fire that flared in her eyes had vanished, replaced by wide-eyed, watery desperation.

Mewtwo paused to look down at the Typhlosion, tentatively touching the fallen Typhlosion with his tail, a brief expression of regret glancing over his face. But then, it was gone and Phonos felt pure rage explode inside of her. Transforming without thinking or knowing how her body was changing, she leapt forward and clawed at Mewtwo, viciously trying to mangle the arm that had killed Baron and put that disturbing, heart-broken tone in her sister's speech.

Mewtwo flew up into the air suddenly, and then threw Phonos aside as if she were a rag-doll. Her whole body flared in pain as her spine cracked against the rocks and she felt blood trickle through her fur. She looked down at her body, not able to distinguish what Pokemon she had transformed into. It looked like some mangled version of a Typhlosion, but as if she had tried to replicate a thousand different things at once along with it.

Without meaning too, she transformed into her human form and got to her knees, her spine fully repaired through the transformation process but her fatigue still present, and the blood still staining her skin. Uneasily, she got to her feet and tried to think clearly, her vision swimming and everything coming in and out of focus. It was only then did the blood seem so vibrant, on all the Pokemon gathered and even from where Craig and Annie had been affected and attacked.

Both Annie's Pokemon and Craig's Pokemon were being thrown about by Mewtwo and blasted aside. Craig threw up shields, blasted out the most powerful psychic attacks he could, ran around Mewtwo whilst dodging and defending from the deadly attacks. Annie sobbed, clinging into Toxin who could only stand loyally by his trainer's side, a determination to defend her with his life evident in his solid posture. And she, the ultimate creation, the weapon that had been created, sharpened and perfected over the year, could only kneel on the ground and watch in horror at the battle raging on before her, only able to think one thing: had they overdone it? Stretched themselves too far?

Annie was calling Pokemon in more and more frequently, and for all of Phonos' efforts she couldn't look away from the corpse lying still and limp – Baron's face was screwed up in pain, and a cold shiver went down Phonos' spine staring at the sad, pained expression on the pokemon's face. Had he died thinking of how he had disappointed Annie, of how he had failed?

"Phonos, for god's sake do something!" Craig yelled all of a sudden, pulling Phonos away from her thoughts and back into reality. Phonos transformed as quickly as she could, ignoring the agony spreading through her body at her unfocused metamorphosis, into a ghostly, black form. She had never tried this before, and it showed in the uneven arms she had formed and the way the jagged, blood-red necklace scratched at her face. It would have to do, she didn't have the time and she had to reserve some of her energy.

Placing both of her clawed hands in front of her, she rushed at Mewtwo, floating above the ground and moving as fast as her Darkrai body would allow her. Her claws made contact and she pushed powerful dark energy through her limbs, broadened the Dark Pulse's power as far as it could go as she tried to make Mewtwo fall. The thought that somebody else could die was the only thing powering her, the only thing making her capable of maintaining her energy-consuming form.

Another Aura Sphere hit her square in the chest and sent her hurtling away, crashing into the ground again. She looked up wearily, aware that her powerful form was slipping away, flickering like a dying flame. If she didn't get herself under control, she might go back into the weak form of a Ditto. She was running out of energy very quickly - she couldn't keep this up.

She looked at Mewtwo and noticed all the gashes and bruises over his body, the sag in his shoulders and the weakening, struggling breath and knew that soon, one of the parties would fall. Somebody would finally be defeated. It was only the knowledge that soon it would all be over, that this horrible waking nightmare would be over, that made her transform once more, forcing all her will into transforming herself into a Banette. She pushed aside all the nausea at taking a ghost body yet again, and stretched her arms open wide, strange ghostly energy building between her fingers.

Mewtwo had just slashed through Craig's Skarmory with a sharp edge of dark, fiery energy, and the steel bird fell to the ground with clatter of steel. As Craig returned the Skarmory, he could only hold his psychic barrier up in defence, completely helpless with no Pokemon to defend him and only barely enough energy to defend himself.

The tall Pokemon swung his arms and slashed through the air with pure psychic force, trying to shatter Craig's weakening shield and in a blind flurry of fear, Phonos heaved the Shadow Ball at Mewtwo with all her might, striking Mewtwo between the shoulder blades and making him stumble dizzily. Craig dashed away towards Annie, who was still protected by Toxin and desperately trying to keep the Ariados' strength up with the last of her potions.

The spider was weakening, and Toxin's thin legs were shaking, but still the Ariados stood in front of his trainer, unwilling to back down and expose Annie to Mewtwo's wrath. Phonos felt an odd fondness for the Ariados, though the Pokemon was little more than a stranger.

"Have you got any pokeballs left?" Craig asked, grabbing the few he had and shoving a couple into Annie's palms as Annie shook her head, watching Mewtwo carefully. Annie's face was blotchy and red from crying, but her lips were stiff and she seemed full of resolve to see this though to the end, whatever that would be. Without thinking, Phonos released another Shadow Ball at Mewtwo and darted over to her side, ready to defend her whether she wanted her to or not. In that instant she didn't care what Annie felt about her. No matter what, Phonos would always consider the young woman her sister.

Mewtwo advanced towards the assembled group, and Toxin and Phonos stood in front of their exhausted trainers. All of them, Mewtwo included, had been keeping up the fight for a very long time. Both Mewtwo and Phonos had exhausted their Recovers, and the trainers had been keeping up as best they could, using every potion and revive they could have stuffed into their bags. Phonos was suddenly very aware of the blood staining her black, doll-like body and her body, her mind and her soul were screaming for rest.

It was sudden death, and all five of them knew it. Annie tossed Ultra Balls fiercely, and each one Mewtwo managed to break out of, even if the pace was slow and weary. It was the psychic Pokemon's will that was keeping him going, if nothing else.

Mewtwo raised one tired arm and in union, Toxin and Phonos struck. The spider hitting with every attack he could come up with and Phonos wildly using anything that would come to mind, barely even aware of what she was doing. Mewtwo swiped the spider aside with a blast of psychic energy and the bug tumbled away, legs still twitching weakly in an effort to get up and his faceted eyes looked at Annie weakly, full of such sincere regret and love that Phonos could see tears brimming in the girls' eyes again.

Phonos could understand the Pokemon's body language. He was apologising. Apologising so earnestly, and warning Annie to just run, to run and leave it all behind. It was hopeless though. If there was one thing Annie Lester would never do, it was run away.

Annie shrieked and rushed towards Mewtwo, truly losing all her control. Mewtwo seized the infuriated girl within a ball of psychic energy. Dread washed through Phonos as Mewtwo raised Annie higher into the air, his fingers steadily closing in tighter and tighter around an invisible something in his palm.

With an uncontrolled scream of pure fear, Phonos leapt at Mewtwo and seized a hold of the Pokemon, too frightened to think clearly and attack properly. All she knew was that she had to hold on, she had to hold on and let all the power she had barrage the savage Pokemon, to let everything explode out of her and destroy the other. Mewtwo made a small choking noise and released his grip.

The energy holding Annie up disappeared and the girl began to descend at a horribly fast pace, the girl shrieking as she fell. Before Phonos knew what was happening she heard a horrible crack and Annie's screams were cut short.

Phonos barely registered the fact Mewtwo had been consumed by the last pokeball Craig has just flung, she didn't even notice her body changing into a human and she didn't even feel her own exhaustion as she rushed to Annie's broken body.

Breathing unsteadily and tears welling up in her eyes, Phonos could only stare at Annie's body…lying so close to Baron's that she could almost believe that Annie had moved herself there on purpose. From the serene, contented expression on her face, despite the horrors she had faced and the last second she had spent in agony, she could believe it. Looking upon the corpse, it felt as if her brain had stopped working, as if time had frozen. Annie was infallible…but there she lay, cold and unmoving as the stone around her.

She dropped to her knees, she sobbed uncontrollably and she heard Toxin yell out weakly, his voice soft and breaking Phonos' heart. Phonos felt as if nothing could ever move her from that spot. She would stay there until Annie woke up, Annie had to wake up. There was no way somebody like Annie could die.

She felt a hand grip her shoulder and didn't even look up as Craig bent down to gently remove the pokeballs from Annie's belt. It would be cruel to leave them there, but Phonos still couldn't help but feel like there was something wrong with pulling them away from Annie, and if she could have found her voice she would have yelled for Craig to stop, but everything was slipping out of her control.

"Phonos…get up. We have got to go," Craig said softly, his voice reassuring and gentle, but even Craig's voice had a tint of sorrow to it, a mere shadow of what Toxin and Phonos faced. Phonos was frozen to the spot, in that moment, unable to do anything other than stare at her knees and cry. If she hadn't been reckless, Annie may still be alive. She reached forward weakly, but found herself completely incapable of touching the other girl. She didn't want to, because she would feel Annie's cold lifelessness for herself and she wouldn't be able to keep playing up the fantasy that the girl would be able to stand up and live again.

She could feel her body screaming, her knees were aching and she wanted sleep and rest, but she refused to move. Phonos would sit here until Annie came back, until she regained consciousness. She thought back to everything that had happened, everything playing back like an old film in her head – broken and slow – and how she wished so dearly that her training had made her better equipped to the death of one of the few people she actually cared about.

She knew…she knew it was all her fault. All she wanted to do there and then was self-destruct - die and hope Annie would feel this was justice. Her mission wasn't over yet though, she thought grimly, and she wouldn't die until she returned to Dad.

"Come on, Phonos," he said again, this time in his persuasion voice, and despite her mind's protests, she got to her feet, lifting her head unsteadily and wiping tears from her face with her sleeve.

She opened her mouth to say something about giving Annie and her ever-loyal Typhlosion a proper burial, but upon seeing the lifeless Pokemon and trainer lying back to back, Phonos suddenly felt that Annie wouldn't have had it any other way.


	10. Danger

_Yes kids, we're finally into what would have been part two! I hope all of you who have been reading this have been enjoying the experience as much as I had and I wish you a merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) and a merry reading of part 2 xP _

_I would like to thank Galbinus, for being a constant reviewer; Digital Skitty, for putting up with my blabbery PM and taking the time to read this and add it to their C2; the band Foo Fighters, for creating the music I binged on to write this crap; the English language, for letting me butcher it, and my friends, for putting up with blabbering on and on._

**_Without further adieu, enjoy part two!_**

* * *

**Chapter X  
****Danger**

Dad's eyes were cold and unreadable as Craig relayed the story, staring intently at Phonos all through-out. All she could do was sit in her chair, feeling as though the few splatters of blood on her body and clothes were heavier than anything she had ever carried, and her skin tingled as if the blood was expanding – spreading to devour all her body.

For all her efforts, she couldn't erase the image of Annie falling through the air, the sound of her screaming as she descended faster and faster towards the ground, nor could she get rid of the horrible sounds of bones cracking against rock. Even the moment where Annie's screams were cut short, so suddenly and before they should have, was replaying over and over in perfect clarity in her mind's eye. All of them with one connecting, horrible thought – the moment she had lost her rational thought, and leapt forward to attack Mewtwo, that was the moment the Pokemon had lost his grip and the moment Annie's fate was sealed.

As Craig finished his story, silence fell over the gloomy room. Dad's expression was completely unreadable, and he stared over his hands with blank eyes, looking to and fro from the lanky boy and the shivering, reticent girl before him.

"Mewtwo was caught then?" he asked quietly. Craig opened and closed his mouth like a fish gulping for air at the comment, struck dumb by Dad's indifference and brisk, business-like mannerisms. He fell back into his seat, throwing his arms over the armrests, and shook his head in disbelief, sunglasses slipping down his angular nose.

"Yes," he responded, practically spitting the word between his teeth. He slouched in his chair, hanging his head across the back with a sigh and unclipped a black and yellow sphere from his belt, tossing it vaguely. It didn't even get close to wear Dad sat and thumped against the side of the desk, bouncing to the floor and rolling across the carpet.

Phonos almost moved from her seat to retrieve it but Dad, uncharacteristic as it was, stood up and walked across to pick up the Ultra Ball without a word. He gently set the sphere, which even then seemed to resonate with an odd sort of power, on his desk.

For a brief, unbelievable moment, Phonos could swear that Dad had given the small ball an intense, scathing glower of sheer loathing and anger –an expression that hungered for vengeance. Yet as soon as Phonos had seen it, it vanished and Dad's practiced emotional detachment returned to his face, and she was unsure as to whether it had just been a figment of her imagination or not.

"With only two causalities and the needed research item captured, I believe this mission should be marked a success," he said, opening one of the drawers on his desk. He set the papers neatly on the desk and began scribbling, taking out a small booklet, filling in a few details and ripping out the page before he handed the completed form to Craig. Craig reached for it slowly, as if in stupor, before taking the cheque from Dad's outstretched hand.

"You may go," he said shortly. Both Craig and Phonos got out of their chairs and shuffled out the door, and for reasons Phonos couldn't quite grasp, Craig reached out and placed both hands on her shoulders as she lead the way out the door and down the halls. Once they were a few paces away from Dad's office, he released and breathed a deep, heavy sigh and pushed his sunglasses up his nose.

"Phonos…" Craig said suddenly, making her jump and wheel around to face him. Craig looked sickly and woozy, barely able to stand up straight and stay on his feet he breathed in deeply, "I – I think Dr Lester might try to kill himself."

"Dad wouldn't do that!" she exclaimed before she could stop herself. Craig raised an eyebrow at her then laughed in an eerie, empty way, leaning against the wall and clutching his stomach as if he was going to be sick.

"Dad, huh?" he said, a weak smile playing on his lips and his face a sickly shade of grey, "That explains a few things."

Phonos felt her face burn. It had been years since she had called Dr Lester Dad out loud, Annie had beaten it into her from an early age that it was strictly forbidden for her to refer to her father like that. Annie was gone now though, she thought with a low shudder as the memories tried to leapt to the front of her mind again, and beneath the layers of shame, sadness and a strange feeling of emptiness, Phonos felt a guilty, childish hope swell in her stomach – perhaps without Annie Dad would acquire some fondness for her, and start considering Phonos his daughter after all?

"Oh don't!" Craig said very loudly and without warning, prompting Phonos to snap her eyes back up at him. To her alarm, his eyes were puffy and red, and what little colour had been on his cheeks had been drained away. He looked sickly and ghostly.

"C'mon. I can feel all this, you know. What I just got from your…Dad…is making me a little unstable and I don't exactly want to burst into tears in the hallway."

She stared uncertainly, having no idea what to think. How had she made him upset? She knew she must have done something, yet for all her life she couldn't for one minute specify what foolish thing she had done or said.

For all her efforts, she couldn't help but stutter out the one word that had been imprinted onto her mind for as long as she could remember:

"S-sir…"

Craig let out a strangled, frustrated yell and flung a fist at the wall, making impact with a crash and, yelping in pain and gripping his sore, red knuckles, he recoiled. Phonos could only stare blankly, glad that at this late hour there was nobody about to witness Craig's outburst. She had no idea what to do – what _could _you do? It wasn't in her programming; she had never been taught how to be of a comfort to somebody.

"T-this place sucks. It all stinks."

Phonos' hands were shaking.

"And look at you. Look at the poor, miserable things they create here."

Phonos took a step forward, reaching out with one hand to lay her fingers on Craig's shoulder. Yet for all her efforts, it was like an invisible wall prevented her from reaching forward. She couldn't find the courage.

Craig laughed – a weak, high-pitched chuckle of a laugh.

"Hey, let's look at me for a second will we? What a poor, miserable thing they've created of me."

What was going on? What was wrong with him? Phonos had never heard anybody say anything like that about the institute before. If Craig hated it, why was he here? Why did he even want the salary from this place if he loathed it so?

"It never used to be like this."

Phonos had to wonder what it used to be. She had never been given knowledge of how the Institute worked, or how the Institute evolved – it was simply there and that was that, of the inner workings of her universe, she knew nothing.

A sympathetic look passed over Craig's face, probably as Phonos' emotions reached him, and she saw him visibly start to breath easy, his fists slowly unclenching and the familiar unruffled expression returning to his face, bit by bit. He shook his head and ran a hand through his wild black hair.

"Hah. Stuff just…happens with you, doesn't it?" Craig said, his voice returning to normal so suddenly that Phonos was taken aback.

"I…don't really understand," she replied blankly, wishing she could have done something for him during his little break-down. But she hadn't, she's just stood there and watched as his world tumbled down around him. Feeling guilt grip her stomach, she realised that with Annie gone maybe she needed a replacement for her. She couldn't call him her brother though, for some reason…she couldn't really bring her to do it. She felt, somehow, that'd be putting him into danger.

Craig only laughed, pushing a hand up through her hair, and began to walk away from the girl, as if nothing had happened.

"Pho!" he called over his shoulder, "I'll see you later!"

For all the thoughts crashing around her mind, Phonos couldn't help but smile at the nickname, an odd, warm sensation filling her belly. Craig wasn't exactly family but…it was something at least. She glanced back down the hallway at where her father's office lay. For the plan formulating quietly in her mind, she might need somebody to rely on. Somebody that she could detach herself from if needed.


	11. Voice

**Chapter XI  
Voice**

Long ago, Phonos had stopped being restricted to her room. She was quite open to wander the halls as long as she didn't bother anybody or interfere with anybody else's research. She had simply never taken the initiative, for the pure and simple reason of that she couldn't see why. Her job was simply to sit on a shelf until somebody needed her, and then she was to be used and replaced on the shelf. It was a lonely duty, but it was one she held proudly.

This would explain why, as she walked down the hall, unsupervised and without explicit orders to do so, her hands were shaking, her steps were faltering and her stomach was churning viciously. All the same, she knew that there was a need for her solitary walk down the ever-quiet hallways. Most of the scientists and workers were restricted to their rooms for the most part, perhaps for the same reason as Phonos – they couldn't see any reason to step out of their lairs - or perhaps because there was too much work to be doing to be wandering from place to place. Any routes walked by the institute workers would be swift and direct, with no dilly-dallying between doors. Phonos aimed for her pace to match that sharp, controlled efficiency.

She came to an abrupt at the tall, imposing mahogany door of her father's office. She swallowed so hard it hurt her throat and lifted a shaking, bony hand, reaching towards the handle with obvious hesitation and cowardice. The thought of just abandoning her plans for being foolhardy and ridiculous, which they were, and taking the hasty route back to her room entered her mind but she pushed it aside with all her strength – she had to do this. If what Craig said was right…then maybe she was late already, but she just had to try and save him. She didn't know if he would go through it, she just didn't know any more, but her world had been shaken up by _her _death and she wanted more than anything to just go back to the way it had been before – simple, straight-forward and without complication.

She knocked on the door and a low voice growled for her to enter. Pushing through the doorway tentatively, she saw her father sitting behind his desk, reading through stacks and stacks of papers as if nothing had ever changed since yesterday.

Despite herself, she couldn't help but think that she would have seen something more dramatic than this. She knew, from Craig's words at least, that it was eating him up inside really, but even after Annie's death, the world had kept turning. For some reason, she wished it wouldn't. It seemed so…disrespectful for everything to keep going – she felt as thought everything should just stop. Stop like a machine with a cog taken out of it, never to move again.

"Sir," Phonos begin, disgusted to hear the tremble in her voice, Craig would have been laughing by then. Giving herself a hard mental kick, she cleared her throat, "I…uh…"

Dad wasn't even looking up from the papers, simply signing, stamping, scribbling and sorting without a glance at the bony teenaged girl standing by his desk stammering so pathetically. She inhaled deeply, trying to suck in any courage that she had for one burst of vocal effort.

"Sir, this may seem a tad…spontaneous," Phonos said. Stupid, Pho, the word is stupid, she thought angrily to herself, furious at herself for even taking this plan into the physical world. She just had to stick her nose into it, didn't she?

"Sir, I just wanted to ask if it would be alright…I mean, I wanted to suggest to you, sir, that I…oh sorry, sir…I mean…" she blabbered, well aware that by this point Craig's laughter would have turned from restrained sniggering to all-out hysterics – the boy would have been shaking his head in disapproval and scorning her persistent usage of the word 'sir'. She forcefully pushed the boy out of her mind and stopped her stammering to utter what she had been meaning to say all along, "I would like to work on the Mewtwo project with you and the other scientists, sir, if that's alright."

Dad looked up at her in surprise and Phonos had to stop herself from gulping, keeping her posture perfect and under control. It was only with the power of her mind did she keep her feet glued to the ground and her gaze steady and unwavering.

"Interesting proposal," Dad said, after what felt like far too long a pause. His eyes had never seemed so intimidating, but Phonos couldn't deny the curious expression in them - the look of curiosity that may carry her to where she wanted to be.

"You _are _designed to be able to learn things quickly, process and remember information," he said, thoughtfully, as if more talking to himself than anything else, "And your own genetic make-up, even for its flaws, could be useful."

Phonos was struggling to stop the triumphant smile twitching the corners of her mouth from spreading across her face.

"I will permit this then," he said, "After all, I can't be sending you on field-work all the time, and you may wind up attracting attention to us if you are seen frequently. However, don't think that this gets you out of your usual work, but I think you _do _need to start doing work between missions, rather than wasting our time and money."

"Thank you, sir!" Phonos squeaked and, realising how loud her soft voice had suddenly became, cleared her throat and added a subdued, "Thank you, sir. You will not regret this."


	12. Speak

_Author's Note: If possible, I'd listen to the song 'Everlong' by the Foo Fighters for this chapter. It was a rather big influence. If you don't have it, I recommend you get it –simply because it's a beautiful song!_

_BACK TO ADVENTURE!_

**Chapter XII  
****Speak**

The Mewtwo project was a predictable one. The Institute was, as always, devoted to making money, making progress and being able to shove it in each others' faces. For a team of scientists, they didn't act much like a team. They were determined to get there before the others, determined to discover that one little thing that would turn the project on its head and make them the alpha male amongst the team.

Phonos was just their highly sophisticated tool, carrying equipment, going on missions to recover data or objects needed for the experiment. All the while, Mewtwo sat in its pokeball, each researcher, for all of their boasting, as scared as the next to open the pokeball and let the savage Pokemon free.

Every time Phonos had to touch the pokeball, she could feel Mewtwo's simmering resentment and impatience, and now then she got a stab of fear or loneliness when she picked up that metal sphere. Though at first she would almost drop the ball in fright, or hesitate and ponder on if it would be right for her to release the poor creature, she quickly learned to push her inner conflict aside, and continued with her work. All the while observing, learning, remembering every little fact and figure that she could, compiling it all into her young mind as fast as her programming would allow.

All the while, Phonos felt as if all she could hear was the ominous ticking of a clock, watching as her Dad grew paler, the bags under his eyes become more pronounced as he withdrew into his office, a pale, flickering shadow of the man he once was. If Dad died, Phonos would never forgive herself.

It was strange, Annie and her father had never shown any affection, yet Phonos knew the loneliness Dad suffered. He noticed the way the photograph of Annie that he usually kept on the shelf of his office was usually facing away from him, or that Dad kept putting it face-down on the wood of the shelf, not wanting Annie's eyes burning into him. He wouldn't offer explanation, and she was the only one who truly cared.

There had been a definite shift in Phonos. Whilst before Annie's death, her natural human form had had curly, dark hair and Annie's round green eyes, she had taken it upon herself to change her form so that it resembled neither her parents nor Annie. The hair that had once been curly, thick, black and lustrous was now straight, thin and a pure ghostly white that didn't look normal on such a youthful face, and add that to her now black, colourless eyes Phonos looked like a ghost wandering the Institute, her skin pale from staring so intently at the computer screen, from analysing and learning and studying and being so far removed from the sun that she could barely remember what an open sky looked like.

"V-Twenty," a voice said. Phonos lifted her weary head away from her work, her fingers smudged with ink and graphite and papers piling around her borrowed work-space. Dr Silver stood behind her, a clipboard held in his thick arms and his eyes looking cynical and downbeat even behind his thick square glasses.

"Yes, sir?" she said, subtly hiding her notes from view with one pale arm.

"You have a visitor," Dr Silver said, in a voice that clearly implied he didn't think she should be having visitor of any kind, much less that he had to be the one informing her of this. He stepped aside to show a pale, messy-haired boy with a broad smile on his face and rounded sunglasses. She almost started in surprise, but restrained herself and kept her perfect posture on her chair.

"Thank you, sir," she said to Dr Silver. The middle-aged man grumbled and stalked off without another word to the younger people, slamming the office door behind him huffily.

Craig took a second to take in her surroundings, his eyes closed as his mind reached out and then he strode towards Phonos confidently and sat himself down on the desk, unceremoniously pushing some of the work aside to give himself some room. Phonos waited uncomfortably, feeling incredibly awkward. What on earth was one supposed to do in such a situation? Having never had a visitor in the time she'd worked in the department, Phonos was truly at a loss.

"Pho, you never told me you were transferring over here," he said and despite the fear that she'd somehow offended him, his tone was flat and serene – almost uncaring. For some bizarre reason, Phonos found his apathy upsetting. She couldn't for a second explain why, but she wanted him to be bothered that she hadn't told him. It was ridiculous and illogical, and Phonos mentally battered herself on being so irrational and self-absorbed.

"Quit that," Craig said, eyes narrowing and Phonos' insides squirmed in embarrassment. She was being foolish, Craig could sense everything she was feeling and, to some extent, thinking. It was rude to thrust such trite worries on the boy. Looking him over, she found that he was taller than before, his ashen face seemed older for some reason and there were dark, tired smudges under his eyes. When was the last time she had seen him? She couldn't even really remember. She hadn't been keeping track of time; she had just let all the hours melt away into each other, her thoughts completely keeping to one straight path. It had been the first time in a while her thoughts had deviated from her work.

For a few moments, the two sat in silence, only interrupted by the sound of Phonos' pen scratching across the paper, or the swipe as she placed one paper on a tray and moved on to her next task.

Without warning, Craig sighed loudly and Phonos jumped, feeling her blood rise to her cheeks – she was far too easy to startle. She could only hope that she didn't look as much as an idiot as she felt.

"Damnit Pho," he said, his voice frustrated and angry, and despite the fact his dark eyes weren't turned to her, Phonos could feel Craig looking at her, staring intently with the sight he had from his mind, "Why the hell are you donating all your energy into this? Why in the hell don't you just…argh. You used to be so different, and I could feel that, and I could feel the depth and the strength beneath all the fear…and fuck…you're so goddamn…"

He trailed off and Phonos stared, a frightened, wide-eyed expression on her face. Like a man watching his house burn, she stared at Craig, almost expecting him to raise his hand to strike her, despite that fact both of his hands were stuffed into his pockets.

He didn't move, and Phonos couldn't. She remained shrinking as far back into her chair as she could, for some reason she was absolutely frozen to the spot in fear at the all too familiar annoyance and aggression in his voice before he had trailed off. The air seemed stiff, hot, suffocating and oppressing for some reason and a familiarity clicked at the back of her mind, conjuring a million different images.

Images of the very girl her plan was to bring back to life, all of them showing violence and aggression in the young woman; showing her bringing down her hand in anger against Phonos' face. Phonos could almost feel fingers digging deep into her arm, twisting the bone and daring her to cry or to scream. She could remember telling herself not to fight back, that Annie was right and Annie was just and Annie was wonderful, and that Annie didn't deserve to be hurt. Assuring herself that it was she, Phonos, that deserved to be hurt.

All that for affection Phonos tried to give that Annie didn't want; all for Phonos craving for Annie to one day smile at her, to one day hug her and call her sister.

She shook her head viciously, no longer caring for her lost perfect posture, or that the boy sitting nearby would be able to feel every stab sinking through her skin and into her veins, like some lethal injection. All she wanted to do was try to clear the memories from her mind but it all remained, floating intangibly before her eyes, but so real and crisp and so horribly painful. Phonos wanted to deny it was there, she wanted to erase it and pretend it had never been there. While every day she bore the sin of Annie's death on her shoulders, she wanted to push any guilt that Annie would have felt for her – if she had ever felt it's prescense. Even in death, she wouldn't allow the other girl to be impure.

"Pho! Pho!" a voice tugging at her consciousness, pulling her up to the surface of her own mind and Phonos felt like she had forgotten to breath as air filled her lungs. Craig stared down at her, his thin, spider-like arms stretched out to her, shaking her unevenly. Biting down the vomit rising up her oesophagus, Phonos looked at the boy staring at her, showing clear fear in his usually calm face.

"Oh god Pho I'm sorry. I-I didn't know what it was I did, I'm so sorry, you just turned to scared and I could feel it…it was so, so horrible…god! I didn't know what to do and you wouldn't stop shaking and then you're just breathing really weird and…oh god are you alright? Phonos?" he said shakily, his voice even higher than usual in hysteria. Oddly enough, Phonos felt a suppressed peal of laughter shaking her chest at the boy's panic. Upon feeling Phonos' improbably placed amusement, Craig's panicked expression seemed to soften into concern, and she felt his fingers relax on her bony shoulders.

"She hated me," Phonos said softly, a gentle, ironic smile on her face and a psychosomatic pain ripping through her thin body as she spoke, "She really did."

Craig understood instantly, swallowing and not taking his hands from Phonos' shoulders.

"I really don't think she hated you," he said, his voice confident but Phonos knew that behind all that there was uncertainty, "She just…didn't seem to respect you."

Phonos' laugher broke out from her mouth, hollow and shaky, and somehow more upsetting and eerie than if tears were rolling down her face and she was sobbing her heart out. It was a mirthless, joyless laugh.

"I tried making her my sister you know," she said, the smile still plastered on her face. She didn't know why, because it didn't match the odd cracking sensation spreading across her body, expanding from a strange sensation burning her chest.

Craig only nodded to show he understood, still keeping a grip on her shoulders, as though he were afraid she'd fall away or have another fit if he let go. His fingers were warm, his grip comforting, and Phonos felt so uncomfortable with the docile contact that she almost wished he would let go.

"I asked for it…I really did. I'm sorry sir, for worrying you," she mumbled. Craig pulled his eyebrows together, his lips thinning to a tight line in irritation. He pulled her into a quick hug that made her almost jump and leap back in surprise, but upon realising that there was nothing darker behind it, she relaxed.

"Enough of the sir," he said, and Phonos wondered why he didn't just use that hypnotic voice of his if the 'sir's bothered him so much. He let go of her and held her a little away. Even then, when Phonos couldn't be much over a foot away from him, his dark eyes were only looking vaguely at where he thought she should be.

"Because," he said tersely, eliminating the need for Phonos to vocalise her thoughts – possibly because he knew she was too scared to, "You should be able to decide what to say."

At this comment, Phonos felt her worries momentarily vanish, and an odd, liberated joy surged through her body. Craig's lips relaxed and curved gently across his face in a kindly smile at her reaction and the grip on her shoulders slackened until his fingers loosened and she slipped back into the chair. She had no idea why what he said prompted that reaction, but for some reason she couldn't stop smiling. Phonos couldn't think of any time anybody had wanted her to do something for herself by herself, wanted her to make a decision.

"I see…Craig," she said, a genuine smile curling her thin, pale lips as she pushed the word out, surprised at how easy it was, and how natural it felt. His smile was tugged wider. Suddenly, it was as if the ground had elevated beneath Phonos; that suddenly she and Craig were standing as equals – it was odd, completely alien yet completely welcome.

"What?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, that stupid grin still fixed on his face, "Not know what it's like to be human?"

Phonos couldn't think of a single, solitary thing to say. All she knew was that she didn't want to move on, she wanted to stay there. She wanted to just stay there and let that feeling never stop, to just feel real and wanted and human for the rest of her life, no matter how long it lasted. At any other point, she would have been shocked by own boldness from gripping Craig's wrist so tightly, but now she wanted him to just stay there. Her other concerns seemed to have fallen away.

"You really are like nobody else here," Craig said, his voice full of mirth, but there was something…sad about it. She could see it in his face, something that stuck out amongst the good humour – an overhanging lamentation that she couldn't find a cause for. Her bony fingers gripped his wrist tighter, almost angry at him trying to move on. It was ridiculous, but she felt almost indignant at time just for flowing forward, as it always had. She wanted to capture that moment, she felt like she had been waiting for it for far too long for it to slip away so quickly. It wasn't…it wasn't fair.

"It really isn't," he said with a grim smile, brushing shaggy black hair out of his face with his free hand. Phonos sighed. She knew that it couldn't last forever, as much as she wanted it too. It was pathetic really, such a small gesture and she cared so much for it. He knew that he had to move on, and his hesitation was purely for her sake. She knew that, but she couldn't bring herself to let it go. It was strange; she felt so able to be selfish, she didn't want to let the first time she'd felt so normal slip away without a fight.

"I had a reason for coming here yanno," he said, that strange, sad humour returning to his voice. He understood. He understood so goddamn well, and nobody else did. Phonos felt sure then he would understand what she was trying to do, she could tell him without fear of having her work in the scientific department of the Institute abruptly ended.

"Mmm..."

She was not going to let it get away. She just didn't know how to end the flow of time, but that was something she desperately wanted at the moment, to just take the limits away and let that tranquillity she had managed to capture between her and Craig just last for a time past what she could comprehend.

It was stupid, it was stupid and she hated herself for it.

"When I heard this was where you were working, I thought you were probably trying to do something. I really don't think you should Pho…"

Shut up, shut up, shut up. Phonos didn't want to hear any more, she didn't want anything to continue. Despite how slow his speech was, and how gentle his words, she felt as if that moment was being torn from her viciously, and it was all she could do to not cry and scream like a spoiled child was to grip his wrist tighter and tighter, trying to physically pull back that moment of happiness, of genuine bliss.

"Pho, please."

There was that concern again, that same tone he'd used not soon after she'd had her panic attack. She was worrying him; she was pouring all of her selfishness into him, unfairly forcing her burdens on his shoulders. Guilt started to rise within her, and she forced it down, she kicked it aside, she viciously asserted that nothing else should move. She wanted to freeze, she wanted for that peak to return, and for her to freeze in it forever.

"Just listen to me. We _both _need each others help, we _both _need to fix something that's broken, but if you're trying to fix it that way I think you are…"

Phonos was caught off guard, and looked at him in surprise. They both knew that she needed him, well…she needed anybody really, but she hadn't thought for a second that he needed her for anything. Craig could do anything he wanted to, all by himself. At least that's what Phonos thought.

"I am going to bring her back, Craig," she said, her voice not sounding like her own. The repulsion on his face was obvious, the disappointment painful to witness.

"Why do you even want Annie back Pho?" he snapped, anger clouding his face to be replaced quickly by melancholy, "She hurt you didn't she?"

It was clear that he meant something other than physically hurting her.

"She was my family," she said simply, opting not to answer that question, not wanting to admit that anything about herself may be Annie's fault, rather than her own, "And Dr Lester's my family as well, I-I want to save them both. I have to…that's what I'm supposed to do."

Craig snorted.

"Family sucks," he said, his tone childish and bitter. Ire made Phonos' grip on Craig's wrist grow tighter, but Craig didn't resist or even give it any acknowledgement.

"I really need it. I need to feel normal," she said, and instantly wished she had never let such a selfish desire be verbalised. Craig's expression wasn't condemning though, simply upset.

"Damnit…Pho…damnit," he said, in a pleading, desperate tone, "You don't need a family with them. You don't need them."

Silence again. Phonos knew she needed them; she needed to bring Annie back. She needed to do it, yet looking at Craig he seemed to make so much more sense, she wasn't used to anybody appealing to what she wanted rather than what she needed. She knew that she could probably bring herself closer to her humanity with Craig's help…but that would ruin the illusion, the fantasy. She was supposed to care about her family; she was supposed to feel human and normal amongst them. Human beings couldn't just get rid of their families and pretend they had never been there.

"Well…I see you're going to need to really think this one over. But please, please Pho, don't try and do this. These things have been attempted before you know, they don't work."

She swallowed, still not knowing what to do. Even after all that, she was still confused, she was still lost and she still wanted to bring back that humanity she had had with him before. She almost wished he had never visited, Craig seemed capable of making her consider everything she knew, something that made her realise what she was doing.

"But I think there's somebody else that needs help. There was one other mourner for Annie, you know."


	13. Promise

**Chapter XIII  
****Promise**

The eyes were so lifeless. Phonos could barely even believe that the Pokemon before her wasn't dead, or some kind of stuffed mannequin. She didn't think faceted eyes like that could look so sad or lonely, that those eyes could speak volumes about pain and sorrow to such a deep extent, and with no words.

The arachnid's legs were thin, long and pale; there was trembling in his knees that spoke of weakness and hunger. The Ariados almost seemed ghostly in appearance, or like a shadow that would flicker out of sight in an instant.

Phonos recognised the Pokemon instantly – it was the Ariados that had fought so bravely for Annie; the one who had seen both his team-mate and trainer killed that one day. It seemed like decades ago.

"This is Toxin," Craig said quietly, breaking the almost suffocating silence that had befallen the room. Toxin stared on, not reacting to the sound of Craig's voice.

"I really need your help," he continued, his eyes pleading and he laid one hand over the spider's abdomen, as if frightened Toxin would move away. Toxin made no sign of having any intention of doing so, simply remaining so still and soundless it was almost frightening.

"If I brought back Annie I –" Phonos began to say but Craig cut her off, his voice quiet, but sharp as a needle;

"Damnit, Phonos."

"Well what do you expect me to think!?" Phonos snapped, the uncharacteristic loudness of her own voice startling even her. Looking at the wounded expression on Craig's face, she instantly regretted it and moved away from the Pokemon and the human, feeling her palms sweat and bony fingers shake. She felt so strange.

She couldn't understand what she was meant to do.

"Please, Pho," he said, "You can see it, can't you? Well I can _feel _it. I've been trying to keep Toxin alive all this time, but it's getting difficult."

She could see it. She could see the strain in Toxin's legs, just to keep him upright, could see the weariness in his coloured eyes and the weakness in his shaking, spindly legs. She could see that Toxin wasn't putting up the fight; she could see that it was all Craig, and that the same strain, weariness and weakness had entered his face upon letting Toxin out of his ball.

_Just let him die._

She thought the words, the words that felt so just and easy, but as she opened her mouth they were trapped in her mind, a sense of humanity, of complexity beyond what can be seen, pushing the words back. The instinct to stay alive and keep your allies alive lies quietly, but powerfully.

She swallowed, cursing her own weakness. She knew that, looking at the terrible sadness in the Pokemon, that letting him continue and restraining him from the fate he desired was cruelty, but Craig's resonating resolve prevented her from saying anything. His determination was strong, and Phonos could understand it, and feel it – _he deserves a chance; he can't just give up; we have to help him._

"Toxin," Phonos said quietly, crouching down to the spider's level. Toxin made no sign that he had noticed the young woman addressing him, but Phonos continued regardless. She hadn't been expecting acknowledgement.

"Toxin…I don't know what I can do for you. I-I-I miss her too. And so does Da – her father…please Toxin. D-don't waste yourself…" she said, trailing off weakly, like a candle flickering away. Toxin neither looked at her, nor avoided her. He simply stared on, like some ghoulish doll.

"I mean!" Phonos said abruptly, a strong desire to bring some life into the hollow puppet overpowering her and sending a flurry of words across her tongue, eagerly marched over her teeth and into the air, and not a force in the world could bring them back, "I-I'm bringing her back!"

The Ariados shifted and Phonos sudden saw a subtle movement in the faceted violet eyes, and her own pale, shallow-cheeked face stared back at her from that Pokemon's staring, pensive eyes.

Craig tensed his muscles, but remained silent so Phonos simply ploughed on, encouraged by the trickle of energy that had entered the Ariados.

"Craig brought you here to…to…tell me as much as you can about Annie."

Inside her head, Phonos screamed bloody murder at herself. She was lying! She was making up filthy untruths, she was being deceitful, and she was hiding things. This wasn't something she was _supposed _to do; Mum and Dad had always said that she should always tell the truth to people in the Institute, and despite her lack of practiced the lies were crashing about around her, out of her control.

"So I can work quicker. If I can know all the details – _all _the details – I can bring her back," she babbled. She had to wonder if Toxin even bought it – she wasn't even making an incredible lot of sense.

There was a fire in the Ariados' eyes, a saddening glimmer of hope and she heard Craig sigh and turn away. Phonos' heart sank – he believed it all. The poor creature believed every ridiculous word she had spouted from her mouth, and worse he clung to it.

"I'll help. I'll do anything for Stielgtu Annie."

Phonos was surprised by the sound of the taciturn Ariados' voice, he sounded oddly young. The melancholy around him seemed suited for somebody much, much older.

Craig sighed again, and she saw him shudder and put a hand across his face. Shame burnt away at her insides. What if she couldn't do it? What if she wasn't allowed?

Looking at Toxin's pleading, desperate, hopeful eyes, it was like she was only keeping her mouth over a torrent of water, swimming towards a far-off lighthouse on a far-off shore. The task seemed so immense. She looked at Craig, but his expression was unreadable. For some reason, this made her feel more alone than she'd ever been.

"Please, just bring her back."

Suddenly, she felt the water close in over her head, and the light seemed further away than ever.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry I haven't been updating much recently! Been enamoured with different projects, trying to work out where I'm going next with the story - well I know, I just can't seem to figure out what way's the best way to get there - and generally been uninspired. I'll get up to date with this stuff though, I promise!_

_Hurr. Ironic to be promising stuff at the end of this particular chapter really._


	14. Light

**Chapter XIV  
Light  
**

It was strange. Nine weeks ago, Phonos had been in a similar situation, and she would have said there were three people in her life, her mother, Dr Tsume, her father, Dr Lester and her sister, Annie.

Then, her life has suddenly, and violently turned, and brittle human bones had met hard, unyielding rock. The smash of bones that day, that had rang out so loud in Phonos' mind ever since, had captured all the witnesses, and was unwilling to let go. One, perhaps, in a more literal way.

Phonos stared at the pokeball in her fingers, the metal sphere hot against her fingers. It wasn't that pleasant, mellow warmth that most inhabited pokeballs had, it was burning hot. It was shaking with a familiar anger, a familiar outrage and…a familiar terror. Mewtwo, the Pokemon that had changed everything she had ever considered to be her own.

Nine weeks later, Phonos still said there were three people in her life; her father, the fading, broken Dr Lester, her friend, Craig and a strange, quiet spider that had entered her life from her sister's hand, Toxin.

Phonos was as surprised at her own disinclination towards her mother, but Dr Tsume's tall, slender figure had become a rarity that had quickly become merely a faded childhood memory.

"Miss Pho," a quiet voice said from her side. Toxin looked up at her with unreadable insect eyes, pincers clicking and his thin eight legs balancing on the white tiles of the laboratory, "Sirs Len and Dunne told you to simply put the security up for Mewtwo's pokeball…you have simply been standing there…"

A smile twitched at Phonos' mouth. There was something about Toxin's strangely polite mannerisms, which mismatched his intimidating spider-appearance so thoroughly, that just made her grin. He didn't seem quite as detached from reality as he had earned his goal, though there was still a solemnity in his attitude that disturbed her. She needed to move the project ahead.

"Yes…Dr Len and Dr Dunne did tell me to do that," she said, almost absently, "But we won't do that."

Phonos was almost appalled by what she said, even though it was something of a routine for her. She still struggled to resist direct orders, even under Craig's influence.

"We have more important things to work on right now," Phonos said, "We need to keep this as low-key as possible. Nobody seems to care what I do by myself, as long as I follow orders and stay ou the way, but I'd still like to remain discrete about this."

"Annie?" Toxin asked eagerly, and Phonos couldn't help but wince at the hope in his voice. She nodded, and hoped dearly that this wouldn't be for nothing, spreading out detailed plans, formulae on the table, placing Mewtwo's pokeball in the computer hub for further analysis, blueprints, theorems, books, modules and photographs onto the desk.

Annie's face stared back at her from every photograph, all of Annie's documents from birth til death glared accusingly at her, and all those formulae, all those plans, all those complex and strange equations all pointed one way. Annie, Annie, Annie.

It had been a long nine weeks.

Craig, Phonos and Toxin were getting more accustomed to working as one unit, with one goal. Phonos felt like she was walking on air as the embryo was transferred from plans, sketches, designs and doodles into a real creature. A tiny grey creature, kept alive on tubes and wires, eyes expanding.

It was one step, but as Phonos saw the fruits of her labours budding, blossoming, forming and ripening before, it was as if every bit of knowledge in the world wasn't far from her fingertips. Her brain felt ever-expanding, she felt wings on her back that weren't even there and she understood why her parents did what they did, she understood for once, for the first time ever.

She touched the side of her creation's glass home, watching it, wondering. Wondering if it would survive.

Three days later, the embryo – experiment AL-1, died. Craig recorded it dutifully as Phonos only pursued her cause further, ignoring the tears in her eyes, ignoring the heartbreak in Toxin's wail, ignoring the exhaustion wracking her thin, malnourished body.

Experiment AL-2. Developing and mutating at an excessive, violent speed as she tried to manipulate its embryonic development. Craig destroyed it, before it got out of hand.

Experiment AL-3, reacted violently to genetic manipulation. Experiment AL-4, born without sentient thought. Experiment AL-5, failure. Experiments AL-6, AL-7, AL-8, AL-9, AL-10, AL-11, AL-12, AL-13...all failures.

It was the talk of the laboratory, now. Project AL, as it was erroneously known, was a mysterious thing. It consumed, days, weeks, and months of their lives. Phonos woke bent over the desk to find silk-spun blankets lying upon her, found herself being hauled away to sleep and eat by a concerned Craig and heard gossip, whispers flying around the laboratory. People had protested, demanded to know what they were attempting to do and even offered assistance but something out there was stopping it all. Some force wanted the project to succeed; Phonos felt it more and more every day. Something stopped all the protests, silenced any cries of outrage, and pushed aside any offers for help.

It was a fascination for the scientists…imagine it! One of their creations, suddenly against all odds working on their own creation, something that should have been programmed to obey, to transform, to be in all aspects a robot gaining a mind, a soul, a purpose! Perhaps Dr Tsume's theories weren't as outlandish, they thought. Craig found himself assuaged by Institute workers, asking question upon question about V-Twenty…he had more often than not entered the lab outraged and simmering away.

"They're insane, every one of them, talking about us like we're guinea pigs running around in a cage," he sighed to himself. Phonos looked across at him, his dark hair was hanging across his face and he looked even paler than usual, and dark bags had developed under his eyes.

"It's good," Toxin piped up, and Phonos was warmed by the hope and cheer in his voice. He was sounding better and better as the days went by, as he saw every effort inch closer to their goal, "At least we're being allowed to do this."

Phonos translated for Craig, who merely tossed back his head and laughed, running a hand through his wild hair and pushing his sunglasses up to his face.

"Well Pho…if you're comfortable with it I've got no choice other than to be," he said grinning at her. She stared back blankly.

"But…we can stop any time Pho. Any time. We can find something better than this I'm sure," he said and Phonos heard that hesitation in his voice and guilt gnawed at her gut. She knew he wasn't happy with it…she knew that what they were doing was sick in his eyes, that what they were doing was awful and foul. It probably was awful and foul…but it was all Phonos could think to do anymore. She didn't know what else she could possibly ever do anymore, other than work backwards, to go back in time to when it was simpler, when Annie was alive, her father was happy, her mother was interested and everything was as simple as to follow her orders and hope that her family would love her, and hope that she'd feel human.

But…there was something in the work itself that made her feel more human than she'd ever been. She just wondered if the constant moral doubts, monotony and the darkness residing in her heart were all part of being human as well.

Craig was asleep, as was Toxin. Phonos couldn't help but regard them with an odd warmth and fondness. Perhaps it was their normal genes, but they couldn't seem to handle the exhaustion quite as easily as Phonos could, so after covering them with a few labcoats left from the scientists, she simply continued with her work.

AL-nineteen was developing well - a recognizable human baby was floating in the artificial womb. Her eyes closed, her little fingers gripped tight and her body mutating exponentially fast, her pink skin even seeming to ripple and change as she watched. Craig had even reached into the baby's mind…there was sentient thought in there, nothing complex, but it was there, a resonating presence but…and Phonos remembered her stomach sinking and her familiar self-doubt wriggling it's parasitic way inside her at this….there was nothing _familiar _ about it. It was a new creature, not Annie, She tightened her fists, biting her lip and staring at the creature.

If only she could…if she could find a way to put Annie's memories inside her. If she could imprint upon the creature's mind….'My name is Annie Lester'. Hypnosis? Craig could do it.

She swallowed and glanced away, sickened by her own thoughts. But she _could _do it. It could work. It was for the better….it was to save dad, it was to bring back her sister…it was her fault that Annie had died in the first place, shouldn't see make up for it?

The clack of high-hells against tiles. Phonos' head swung around as the door opened and a tall, familiar figure stood at the entrance, her long dark hair sweeping about her slender waist and a small smile on her face.

"Mo - Dr Tsume?" she said in surprise, catching the words before they left her mouth. Dr Tsume entered, looking around with a hungry, craving fascination in her eyes. Phonos recognised that raking, penetrating stare. Mother always had that look in her eyes when she saw something that fascinated her. A strange thrill chilled her body…it was a long time since she last lavished that much attention on her, and Phonos felt her own moral doubts slip out of her mind.

"You've been making quite the name for yourself, Phonos," the woman said, her voice flat but Phonos leaned forward at the sound of her name, eager to please, like a puppy on a leash.

Dr Tsume looked at her and Phonos sat up straight and at attention. The tall woman leisurely strolled forward and ran a hand down Phonos' straight white hair curiously, then cupped her face and rotated it from side to side, inspecting her thoroughly.

"Changed face structure, signs of exhaustion and malnutrition, eyes….no longer reflect parental ties, hair unnatural," mumbled Dr Tsume, more to herself than anything. Her free hand twitched for a pen to make notes with, and her manicured nails dug into Phonos' pale skin. She winced, and Dr Tsume blinked and released her.

"You've changed your appearance, Phonos," she said, sitting herself down on Craig's empty chair, with only a spare glance at the sleeping boy and the Ariados.

"Y-yes, ma'am," Phonos spluttered, suddenly feeling like a child again, sat in that chair and being told to transform for the cameras…

Dr Tsume 'hmm'ed to herself, and Phonos nearly broke her posture by breathing a sigh of relief that she hadn't asked more. How could she explain why she did all that? She was barely even sure when she'd done it, she simply awoke with a bloody hand and edited face one morning.

Dr Tsume stood up and walked over to the tank, a rare smile sweeping across her pretty face at the experiment in the tube. Glancing at the unborn creature herself, Phonos felt a tiny glow-worm of maternal pride wriggle in her chest. Had her mother ever looked at her like that, ever felt that little tug at heart-strings?

No, no, Phonos admonished herself, Dr Tsume was far too sensible to be bothered by trivial little things like that.

"This is…quite impressive, considering your origins. I was aware you had increased mental abilities, but we apparently underestimated your learning abilities and technical skills," she said. Phonos felt the heat rush to her cheeks, and she merely nodded and murmured a polite 'Thank you ma'am' in response.

Dr Tsume turned back around and sat back down, staring intently at Phonos. She straightened up, trying to regain her composure when all she wanted to do was sob and throw her arms around her beautiful mother. She seemed happy….Phonos had done something right. This thought, that finally she was doing well, she was being smiled at, sent shivers down her spine and like she was about to melt away with bliss..

"I'm proud of you."

Speechless.

"Now….Phonos…could you perhaps explain about the project?"

That one line, that one fond look, full of admiration and love, sent the words spilling out of Phonos' mouth.

Dr Tsume sat proudly, her head held high and her slender hands gracefully rested on the arms of her chair. It was as if she was sitting on a throne, and she was a woman who looked like she had every right to sit in one.

Her long hair, soft and dark, was draped over her shoulders; her legs were crossed languidly, one foot dangling serenely above the cold metal floor. He frowned; she was a fine woman, a woman with a strong determination, a feministic streak, a composed and sophisticated beauty and a brilliant mind. She was a vicious adversary to have.

"It is my opinion, sir, that V-Twenty is one of the finest specimens we have every produced, and we have had a long extensive life-time and a great array of specimens have been created from our branch of the Bane empire," she said all of a sudden, her voice unfaltering. She stared right up at him, a challenging, piercing, almost teasing gaze.

He nearly winced and glanced backwards and forwards between her and his superior, an odd fear for this unknown woman sinking into his gut. Did she consider this all some form of game? A joke?

"Miss Tsume, V-Twenty is a joke. A failed experiment, a complete abnormality and glitch in our system," the dark-haired man said from beside him, "You are here to be put on a well-deserved trial, and to present your case, not to pitch a marketing campaign. At the flick of a switch, Miss Tsume, I can kill you. Bear that in mind when you speak."

With a rare look of fear on her face, the woman glanced at the shackles on her wrists and feet, and the wires tangled around her head like some twisted crown. The fear was quickly replaced by cold, calculating indifference, and for that he couldn't help but admire the woman. She was sitting with her neck mere millimetres away from the edge of the axe, and still retained some dignity – it was arrogant, yes, but admirable.

"I apologize, sir, and thank you for this chance to present my case."

"I'm glad; I will commence the trial post-haste. Mr Layton?"

"Y-y-yes! Sir!" he said, looking up from his computer.

"Please turn on all recording in this room, and announce the trial."

He nodded and pressed a few keys, then pressing his lips to the microphone nervously, he intoned 'June 7th, 2013. Questioning of Dr Yomiko Tsume. Subject, V-Twenty experiment. Witness, Matthew Layton. Questioner, Bane."

Later, Matthew Layton recorded again, this time to end the trial. Shakily, he intoned into the microphone 'June 7th 2013, questioning of Dr Yomiko Tsume. Subject, V-Twenty experiment. Witness, Mathew Layton. Questioner, Bane. Interview ended after fifty-three minutes. Dr Yomiko Tsume executed on site'.


	15. Million

**Chapter XV  
Million**

"Which experiment is this one, again?" Craig asked, both of his hands on the glass.

"Thirty-three," Phonos replied softly, tapping a note on her clipboard. Craig closed his eyes in concentration and Phonos saw a faint blue glow shroud his body, but it was quick to fade.

Then, he opened his eyes, adjusted his sunglasses and sighed.

"No, this one's no good as well. The poor thing's having a complete freak-out in there. It won't accept the memories, Pho. I think we waited too long," he said. Phonos didn't need to know what a freak-out was to understand it wasn't going too well. She clicked her tongue, slid open a panel on the tube's side, flicked a few switches and with a clanking of machinery and a whoosh of air, Thirty-Three was destroyed.

She had managed to generally perfect the technique used to control the ages of the clones but there was still a part missing. She had sixty clones, and had destroyed many already since she always trying to find a way to put Annie's memory, personality, soul into the bodies – a strange concept the Bane Institute had never worked on before. She and Craig had constructed an almost exact replica of Annie's memory with Toxin's and her father's, and in a somewhat drastic manner that shocked the scientists, Craig was attempting to imprint these memories onto the clones.

The clones, physically, were perfect. They were Annie, genetically identical to the girl and though all around her seemed like some bizarre Annie museum, depicting her at different stages of growth from embryo to her adult self, it still wasn't enough. It still wasn't right.

She looked at the dozens of assorted specimens; most of them probably doomed to death and felt a bitter taste flood her mouth.

Phonos glanced at Craig, and noticed the psychic boy swallowing and fidgeting. Craig was getting more unstable by the day…he had been so calm and collected before but lately he looked on the verge of a mental breakdown. She felt a stab of concern in her heart, but she knew she he either had to give up the project or watch him suffer, he refused to quit after coming this far. Was he still hoping she'd give it up? She couldn't possibly. Not after this long. Her mother had told her….she was doing the right thing.

Dr Tsume was a common sight these days. Since that night, she had visited often and this had only fuelled Phonos' obsession.

The two continued their work, and Phonos was unnervingly aware of the gauntness in Craig's frame. It had been a while since she and Craig had spent time working without Toxin's company or any spectators staring in to watch, and an impenetrable cloud of awkwardness had fallen across the pair – like a rift had been dug between them.

"C-craig?" she asked, a familiar awkward stutter returning to her voice. She could talk about anything regarding Project AL without fear or doubt, but anything else and she returned to that meek, stuttering child she'd once been.

"Hm?" he asked, putting his hands on the next specimen, "What is it?"

Phonos looked back at her clipboard, not exactly sure what she wanted to say. There were words on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't know what they were, they simply shyly stopped behind her teeth and tried to sink back down her throat. She swallowed.

"This one….the memories….haven't transferred well. It's got memories of this place and I can't get rid of them. Annie….it's not accepting the name. It's just going off it and adding 'two' on the end over and over…" he muttered, and Phonos put a few notes down on her clipboard absently.

"Maybe Mewtwo's genes are affecting this somehow…it might not just be his own upbringing and personality, it might be a genetic or mental defect we've transferred into the clones," Phonos said smoothly. She found it amazing she could all say that and just let the words roll so effortlessly from her tongue, but she still spluttered and stumbled and struggled the second she tried to think about something other than her work. Still, there had been nothing of that sort recorded in anything written about Mewtwo, their sensors hadn't noticed anything, Craig hadn't noticed anything when he'd analysed the Pokemon's consciousness and her own examination had turned up nothing especially unusual.

The only way to examine Mewtwo any more thoroughly would be to let the Pokemon out of his ball. And that was completely out of the question.

Craig 'hmm'ed noncommittally and removed his hands from the glass as Phonos destroyed the specimen. They were destroying them at an alarming rate this week, and the two continued on their work, moving across the room, Craig reaching inside each clone's mind, checking their progress, mumbling, dictating notes but ultimately, most came down to bringing a quiet death upon them.

"That was specimen sixty….we have eight remaining that haven't reacted violently or badly to the memories, hypnosis or identity imprints. Fifty-two, fifty-nine, twenty, fourty-one, fourty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-seven and fifteen," she said, scribbling it down. 52, 59, 20, 41, 47, 38, 37, 15. It wasn't the best selection, admittedly. Fifty-two fully-developed humans had been killed just to get at these eight. Among these eight, Annie would have to be reborn. There was too much at stake, Phonos wasn't really sure if she could take the emotional strain again to make another attempt.

She wasn't sure her Dad would be able to take the disappointment if she came this far only to fail. Even though he was a scientist – a man who should be used to the ways of experimentation, trial and error, many efforts to the same end - he was no longer the efficient, ambitious man he was once was. Though once he'd heard whispers of what Project AL may be, he had recovered from his depression in ways that therapists couldn't understand and drugs couldn't hope for. What if she snatched that hope away, all at once? What would he do?

"These eight are our best shot, Pho," Craig said, a grin cracking his pale face (Phonos swallowed as she realised how rare those wry smiles of his had become lately), "This is the last leg of our journey, Pho. We've got there, I really think we have."

Only Craig would be able to say something that held such weight so freely, His words alleviated her, and her own mind echoed his words. Yes, she felt, yes…maybe this time…this time I'm going to be okay. Craig had always had that affect, and in earlier years she might have suspected he was meddling with her mind with his powers, yet these days she couldn't help but trust that it was only him.

"It feels like it's been a million lifetimes," Craig said, before she could manage to get the words out herself. She nodded, with a small smile on her ashen face.

A million lifetimes - that was an apt description. She could remember that young Phonos, that little girl with bouncing black curls, bright eyes and that sort of split between an awkward, energetic girl and an automated, precise machine, but she couldn't associate herself with that girl anymore. It was like a great guillotine had been brought between the pair, slicing apart any connection she could have with her former self. Surprisingly, she felt a vague sting at this thought and couldn't think of a rational reason why.

Craig sighed and leaned back against the desk, sweeping the surface of the tabletop with the tips of his long fingers, a little glow of a smile on his face – another sting from deep inside her mind, once again untraceable.

March, April and May all passed swiftly, frantically and Phonos could excitement embracing the laboratory, there was a distinct mental hum everywhere he went, Craig had said and if she changed her form, Phonos would have been able to feel it too. Yet she hadn't needed to do that in a long time.

The first one they lost was AL-Fifteen, who simply had not been able to retain its physical form and broke down. Craig and Phonos had researched all they could of Fifteen and salvaged as much as they could from the specimen, but then with a respectful apology and bow of their heads, destroyed. Seven remained.

Next, AL-Twenty was lost. It was of the same composition of AL-Fifteen, so Phonos didn't find it surprising. The earlier specimens had been produced with similar techniques, all in an effort to make the transfer of memories and identity easier. Though, in all honesty, Phonos couldn't help but think the success of the memory transfer was completely random.

AL-Thirty-Eight and AL-Thirty-Seven had been complete disasters. Through some psychic link that had been unknowingly passed on from Mewtwo and Craig, they had communicated and the emotional stress of their communication had caused their latent powers to become dominant and destructive. In a panic, Craig had been forced to retain them as they tried to break free and Mewtwo's pokeball was wobbling in a perilously vicious manner as Phonos destroyed them both. Even though she had been in human form, she had heard a ringing in her ears as they were destroyed and Craig had to sit down and breathe for a long time afterwards. Phonos desperately began work on the remaining specimens to make sure that any psychic abilities were either recessive, not present or destroyed. Four remained, and Phonos remained hopeful.

AL-Forty-Seven had been going strong, and Phonos couldn't help but feel a tender spark of confidence in that specimen. Craig sensed constant steams of consciousness from AL-Forty-Seven, all of them with a strong identity of Annie, all of them similar to her in many ways, and of them all four of their specimens, Forty-Seven was the most similar to Annie. Phonos had asked Craig if it would be possible to erase Forty-Seven's memory of the experiment and being born – if it was – so that it would seem like Annie never died at all.

After all, if she managed to exactly replicate Annie, it would be like she'd never been dead. In fact, wouldn't it be the same person, really?

Craig seemed unnerved by these thoughts, but agreed that it may be possible to erase the memories.

However, Forty-Seven was also lost, not far from being completed and ready to be born. Phonos hadn't slept that night. Three remained.

AL-Fifty-Nine, a weak specimen at best and Phonos was unsurprised to see it die, barely a day after Forty-Seven. It seemed that Fifty-Nine's consciousness simply…drifted away, disappearing into nothing. It was a strange thing, Craig said, to reach into a mind and to find a hole where its thoughts should be. It was a sort of warm emptiness, he said and Phonos meekly wondered if Forty-Seven had simply wandered away within the depths of its own mind, as silly as the thought was. Phonos crossed out another number on her increasingly bleak list, and two remained.

AL-Forty-One had been second-strongest, next to Forty-Seven. But in the middle of their waiting game, between the constant testings, Phonos' attempts to manipulate the physical body, trying to promote the specimen's speeded maturity and at the same time quash all the thoughts that Craig sensed that didn't fit in with her approved patterns., Forty-One had been lost, and Phonos was at a loss, again, to determine the cause. A lot of the time, she noticed, she couldn't find an answer in science and simply had to content herself with the thought that maybe…just maybe Annie didn't like that body.

One remained. One little butterfly, fluttering so delicately in front of her face but out of her reach. If she snatched too quickly, she would crush it in her hands, try to catch it too slowly and it would simply flutter away and be lost into the big blue sky above. Phonos refused to let this happen. Fifty-Two would work. Fifty-Two would work, because otherwise everything in her life would collapse around her.

On the day that 52 opened its eyes, it had not been welcomed with cries of 'Eureka!', 'We've done it!' or anything excessively joyful. It had been met with a pair of tired eyes, and a quietly hopeful expression on both young faces, reflected strangely in the curved glass that made AL-Fifty-Two's home.

"AL-Fifty-Two…hm….a healthy specimen, not as strong in identity as Forty-Seven, still identifies as the woman Annie Lester. Retains memories of Toxin, all her Pokemon…one of the few in which we changed Baron's death rather than erasing Baron from existence completely," Phonos mumbled to herself, checking through her dog-eared notes, embossed rings with pale yellow coffee stains and grimy thumbprints.

"Bane Waking procedure eight, I guess?" Craig said unenthusiastically, an edge of terror in his voice. She swallowed, nervousness gripping her stomach as she looked at that specimen staring at her. She could see Annie's petulant, impatient gaze through the tube, behind the meshes of metal, behind the webs of wires, it was like Fifty-Two was going 'Hurry up V-Twenty. Hurry up, your "big sister" Annie wants to come back to life. Bring me back'.

"Yes. Apply the anesthetic."

Those million miles she'd walked, those million lifetimes she felt like she'd lived, those million lives she felt like she'd destroyed, those million moments of wanting to cry, collapse, scream, fall apart and simply disappear that both she and Craig had shared…would it be worth it?


	16. Gap

**Chapter XVI  
Gap**

She was such a beautiful creature.

She had been born in the dark, gasping at the cold air stinging her lungs as Phonos laid a soft touch on her damp wrist, feeling the blood pumping beneath the pale skin over her veins. The clone's heartbeat was steady and normal, but Phonos felt like her chest would burst, her heart hammering against her ribs so fast she felt ready to explode.

"H-hello Annie," Phonos said, retracting her hand from the tank and simply staring at that woman in the tank. A cotton blanket had been draped over her, and her eyes were darting around, absorbing every sight around her. They had been wide with terror first, but now she seemed relaxed. Phonos smiled. So like Annie, such a cool demeanour.

The eyes flicked towards her.

"It's been a long time. You've been….injured for a while," she said gently, the lie slipping through her lips with ease. She believed it to some extent, she hadn't been dead. It was impossible to bring people back from the dead, Phonos knew that. She'd simply healed injuries, perhaps injuries so deep it seemed impossible, but she'd done it.

She didn't say anything, simply made a face and turned her head, her long, wavy dark hair shifting beneath her head. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she wasn't sure why. Perhaps her own exhaustion was finally catching up with her.

She'd been on the video phone with Mum a few days ago, after she'd awoken the specimen, she'd sounded so pleased. She'd even said she was proud, she'd stayed for five minutes to talk to her, before she had to leave for a conference and it had made her feel completely amazing. Her father had sent eager messages, requesting time with the specimen once it was fully adapted. After all of that why did she, looking at the face of her sister and the fruits of her labour, want to cry?

She inhaled shakily, continuing to smile at the woman in the tank.

Annie didn't respond.

"I-it's been a long time," she repeated stupidly, her words tripping over her tongue clumsily, "Such a long time."

Annie merely stared, anxious, judgemental eyes burning into her. Phonos rested her trembling hands on the tank, her shoulders convulsing and her eyes clouding.

Without warning, sirens began to blare.

Phonos jumped and wheeled around on her heels. Suddenly, Craig was on his feet and reaching towards the door, sightless eyes wide with fright. Annie thrashed violently in her tank, the piercing noise ringing through her tender ears, and a shrill noise tearing from the back of her throat.

Her breath caught in her throat as she pushed on the door – it was bolted shut, locked down by somebody far away, and high above them in the Insitute. Her stomach churned and in her panic, she considered transforming to escape – but the Bane Institute wouldn't be pleased with that, what if it wasn't what she thought? She'd dealt being locked away, but never like this. Never so abruptly. She'd been locked away as a precious item, or as an overly curious child, but never as a prisoner…unless there was something going on, something that had required the entire lab to be shut down. A raid by the police? Some overly adventurous trainer with a hero complex trying to run the entire Institute into the ground? Or was her first thought as the bars slid down across the door the truth?

"Pho, calm down," came Craig's cool voice, "We can't fight if you're in hysteria."

Phonos stared at him in horror, and for the first time felt the very real urge to slap him across the face. _Fight? _Fight _who_, exactly?

"There are several people approaching the door now, about six I'd say. I don't want to sound like a clairvoyant cliché, but I sense some anger in them," he continued, responding to her thoughts before she even vocalised them, "I don't know if they're armed, but it looks like, if anything, they're here to take action. And they're part of us. And acting under orders."

Craig emphasised the last three words heavily, and as the meaning sunk in, Phonos felt as though her mind was being constricted by chains that bit into her consciousness, and she swallowed.

Three steady bangs on the door. As if in slow motion, Phonos turned, as the bars were raised, the door slid open, revealing a team of men and women, all dressed in sharp suits and armed with guns, gleaming diabolically in the dim artificial light. Her breath rattled in her chest – firearms were something very illegal in this country. She felt a sort of primal rage building inside her – an unexpected, harsh reminder of her Pokemon roots. Firearms were something that had been banned decades ago, by rules built on something other than human law.

The sirens were still blaring, and Annie was still writhing in her tank, her knuckles banging against the plastic and her knees trying to crash through it. The door quickly slid shut behind the team, locking into place.

"Agent Gryllus, and Subject V-Twenty," began the leading woman, an olive-skinned woman with a stern expression and experienced demeanour, "We are under orders to remove you from your posts within the Bane Institution, to bring you for trial against the Administrator."

Craig's fingers were resting on the Ultra Balls at his belt, and Phonos felt her chest go cold with fear. Guns, she thought desperately, wordlessly trying to make the stubborn psychic understand, they have guns.

"On what charges?" he said calmly, smiling serenely as ever. Please Craig, she thought, don't do anything, they have guns, don't do anything.

In her mind's eye, she saw Craig sprawled on the cold floor, blood weeping from the wounds in his chest, the stench of gunpowder still clinging to his corpse.

"Subject V-Twenty is an abnormality that requires extermination," the woman responded in a manner that told Phonos that the woman's words were from another mouth, "It is a subject kept active illegally by an operative outside of Administrator control – in other words, a specimen that isn't supposed to currently exist."

"Uh-huh," Craig responded dryly, in the most disinterested voice he could possibly muster. Phonos' throat felt tight, and her head felt like a tangle of a million different thoughts and emotions, all twisting around each other in one confusing mess.

"In all honesty, it's a miracle the specimen lasted as long as it did," the woman commented offhandedly, "But I digress. Agent Gryllus, you are charged with the assisted expansion of an illegal specimen's life, and also charged with creating illegal specimens of your own."

"The Bane Institute really is a mess nowadays – both of us have been slipping under the radar for a very long time," Craig observed. He had to have a brilliant plan, Phonos thought desperately; he wasn't just making idle conversation for no reason. There was a plan behind all this.

"Quite true, Agent Gryllus," the woman replied wearily, sounding rather sick of this conversation. Her gun was pointed at his chest, her finger stretching towards the trigger eagerly, "With several factors out of the way – such as the rather brilliant, but unfortunately very disruptive, Dr Tsume, hopefully our new Administrator will be able to bring some order into our Institute. I'm as sick of these working conditions as anybody else."

Phonos' mind froze.

"Dr Tsume?" the words slipped out her mouth before she could do anything about it. Everybody looked at her, shocked to hear her speak. Craig pushed his sunglasses up his nose and quirked an eyebrow in surprise.

"Mum?" Again, to her horror, the word fell from her without any knowledge of her processing it, or even moving her lips to form it. She just heard her own voice, an alien, echoing sound she had lost all control over.

The operatives all exchanged quick, glancing looks with one another, some sneering, but most looking apprehensive or even fearful at her last word. This was something entirely unexpected.

"What happened to her?" Phonos' small voice rose easily above the sirens and Annie's intensifying shrieking.

For maybe a second, maybe much longer, there was an uneasy silence. Phonos stared at stern woman, waiting for an answer, a strange emptiness filling her entire body, a strange steadiness and confidence imbuing her voice and a strange clarity of thought in her mind.

"Pho, they've killed her," Craig said.

For the first and only time in her life, Phonos found a huge, inerasable gap in her memory. She couldn't remember what happened as her vision blurred at that single line, she didn't remember what happened after she was staring down the barrel of six guns, all ready to fire at the slightest command.

All that she knew was one minute, those six operatives were alive, and the next thing she knew they weren't. One minute, she was trapped in a locked room, on the verge of death, and the next thing she knew she was in an unknown place, being shaken gently by a white-faced Craig. One minute, Annie's screams were echoing in her ears, and the next thing she knew they weren't.


	17. Loss

**Chapter XVII  
Loss**

The sun flared in the clear sky above, singeing her eyes as they were wrenched open and she was thrown forcibly into the daylight. She blinked dizzily, inhaling deeply as if someone were about to steal all the air away. She saw the dark shape of Craig sitting nearby, his face in his hands. He bolted to his feet as he sensed Phonos' eyes on his back.

"Where…" Voice dry like gravel, cracking like old stone in the sun. Craig shushed her. She was so thirsty.

"On the borders of Lilycove City," he explained briefly, sitting on the grass beside her. There were a few cuts slashed across his face, and Phonos felt suddenly ill. She sat up, ignoring the pain that surged through her entire body as she did so, and pushed a bony hand through her dark, coarse hair. There was a blanket on top of her, spun from silk threads. Craig must've brought her and Toxin here…or something like that. She didn't know.

"Hoenn?" she rasped blankly, her mind only slowly beginning to process the scent of fire and the coppery tang in her mouth. She lashed her tongue around her lips – a sickening coppery tang invaded her senses. She tried to understand what was going on, but her mind was a dim blur, unable to think about anything but her own desperate thirst.

Craig only nodded in response. Phonos glanced down at her hands – her nails were longer than usual, long and jagged, with flecks of blood trapped between fingertip and nail.

"What…" she croaked, but her voice tore viciously at her throat. She swallowed and pulled the blanket up over her bare chest – they were well-hidden, trapped behind a large building and some thick bushes, but she still felt intensely vulnerable.

Her body ached all over – she must have transformed the most severely she had in a very long time. She rubbed her head and tried to reach through that gap in her mind, and snatch up the lost memories, but the more she reached, the further and further the amnesia pulled her memories out of reach. She groaned. Her head ached. She still felt sick.

Craig giggled. She shot him a very rare glare. She'd almost forgotten how very inappropriate he could be.

"I'm sorry," he said, smiling," But you seem…hung-over." Despite the fact she didn't understand the joke, she couldn't stop Craig's smile catching onto her own face. She quickly shooed it away guiltily as what she must have done forcibly returned to her mind.

Craig felt around him, and handed her rucksack that had been previously sitting by his toes.

"Here, Toxin and I stole this from some trainer chick," he said. She stared at him, horrified of what trouble he'd been causing on her account. Sensing her disapproval, he held up his hands as if to shield himself.

"Don't worry, I left her Pokemon and money at the campsite! She'll be fine," he responded defensively, "You need to clean yourself up and get dressed."

She nodded, and raked through the rucksack for a beaten old towel to clean herself off with – she averted her eyes so she didn't have to see what sort of mess covered her – and then picked out the drabbest dress in the bag out for herself, pulling it over herself easily.

She opened her mouth to speak, but then remembered how hopeless her voice was at that moment and closed it – it wasn't like she should really be saying anything right now anyway. As the thick fog ensnaring her mind began to clear, she began to think with a greater clarity of what she'd done – she'd murdered several agents of the Bane Institution in her rage and most likely broke out of the Institute, something she'd been afraid to do since she was, what, six years old?

She was out in the real world now, and nothing could protect her from the monsters outside.

Upon thinking that, she swallowed and wiped sweat off her brow. Mum…she was dead? Dead. The famous Dr Tsume had fallen…probably due her little private project. A wave of nausea swept over her and she barely bit back the urge to vomit, what would she do now? She should go back to the Institute, it would be the noble thing to give herself up – she was, as they said, an anomaly that had gotten out of control. Just as she'd killed all those unsatisfactory clones, she should let the Institute erase her, then she' just be a well-hidden horror story for new recruits. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

She knew what she should do, but why did her stomach drop at the thought of it, why wouldn't her legs respond to her and let her walk away now? Why couldn't she just let herself go home and lie in the grave she'd dug for herself – it was surely what everybody wanted from her!

"Hah," Craig barked, "I've never seen anybody as terrified of free will as you, Pho."

He handed her a bottle of water, and for a few minutes she merely held it in her hands, her brain racing and trying to process the enormity of her situation. The shackles that the Bane Institute had put on her had been smashed, she _should _be happy. But then again, she also _should _be dead. And _should _have been dead a long time ago.

She decided that, for the moment, "should"s didn't apply as well as they'd used to. She took a sip of water; no, a glug of water, gave in to her thirst and drained the entire bottle, her tongue hungrily lapping up every last drop and she sighed with relief, wiping droplets from her face.

"….Annie," she said after what felt a long while of sitting in utter silence. Craig's face fell and he adjusted his sunglasses uneasily, "She's not here."

"She…went a bit haywire," Craig began awkwardly, "I don't know how but she broke out, something was triggered – I'm willing to estimate that when we were stabilising her with Mewtwo's genetics, or maybe when I was transferring all the fake memories, something…well, needless to say, she isn't entirely human."

Phonos swallowed. In short, fifty-two had been a failure. She had _meant _to have been entirely human – a perfect copy of the human Annie Lester.

A million miles she'd walked, but she'd got lost along the way and ended up back where she started. She tutted quietly at herself – this was hardly the time to be getting poetic.

"And Mewtwo?" she asked, dreading whatever answer may come.

"He broke out as well - you were really going nuts and it kind of sent a chain reaction about. It was then that I sorta grabbed you and Toxin and…well, we ended up here. I can only imagine I managed to teleport us, though I'm not sure how I did it," he said matter-of-factly, and added in a tone that implied he intended to do nothing of the sort, "If I want to master that I'd have to train properly."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the cool breeze making Craig wince and touch the cuts on his face.

"It's okay, they'll fade," he said, feeling her concern, "What are you going to do now?"

She bit her lip, flexed her toes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I should give myself up, really," Craig said in a squeaky voice. She stared at him, perplexed by the stupid grin fixed on his face, "That's what you're thinking. But without Grand Puppet Master Tsume, you've lost that _need_ haven't you? It's not like you have anything to prove anymore."

She simply sat with her mouth hanging open stupidly as he easily voiced the emotions buzzing in her mind that she hadn't even begun to understand. She wasn't sure whether he was reading her mind, or she was just that predictable.

"She wasn't my master," she replied blankly, her mind not responding properly to the conversation, "I – "

"It is possible to love someone who manipulates you," Craig interrupted in an odd, dark voice, before his face brightened up again and Phonos had to blink, not sure if she'd imagined the ominous tone and bleak expression or not, "It's all up to you what you do from now on though – you're free to go back if you want. If there's anything left from Mewtwo's rampage."

Free. She'd never really considered freedom an option, ironically. And oddly, she'd never considered herself imprisoned either; though perhaps that was just proof of the manipulation skills of those around her.

"That sounds like something I'd say," Craig commented wryly, then widened his eyes at her next thought, "Okay, sorry, I'm prying. I didn't even think you'd dare use language like that in your _thoughts_, Pho."

Phonos flushed red at her inadvertent snapping and returned to her thoughts, awkwardly mumbling an apology.

Dr Tsume's death still stung at the back of her mind, leaving a gap in her heart and queasiness in her stomach, but her emotions were spinning erratically in her head – too wildly for her to even think properly.

She felt sick again, and shuddered involuntarily. She wasn't even sure what she should even consider doing. A million different options stretched in every direction, twisting and jerking around unpredictably – all their destinations beyond the horizon. It was dizzying, terrifying but liberating, she felt strangely ready to leap into the sky and defy everything she'd ever known.

"Personally, I think you should start a band," Craig said suddenly. She only looked at him blankly, too lost to understand what bizarre notion was running through his mind. He grinned.

"Yeah, you could sing about the horrible _pain _of your existence. _Oooh, _I transform, darkness! Into a HB pencil," he sang in a ridiculous falsetto. Despite her reservations, she giggled timidly. He was acting so bizarre that she couldn't really tell if he was happy or not.

"There are teenagers that would eat that shit up," he continued, a little too cheerfully, before his tone suddenly turned back to normal – in fact it almost sounded weary, "Either way. We should head into the city. You should alter your appearance – I'm sure someone will be looking for you, and it would be our luck that they just happen to be in Lilycove City."

She sat silently, taken aback by his sudden loss of energy.

"Well, you don't want to be caught before you decide for yourself, do you?" he said with a shrug, apparently misunderstanding her confusion, "As for me, removing these things and changing my hair should be enough. They're completely disorganised and I suspect they don't care much about me so I won't have any huge worries."

He pulled off his sunglasses and clipped them closed, slipping them into his pocket. He looked strange without them on, and she noticed his hand habitually reaching to adjust them, before he smiled to himself and returned it to his pocket. How long had he been wearing those things?

He smiled at her, the bags under his eyes more pronounced with the absence of his glasses. He looked exhausted, but she highly doubted he would ever admit it.

"We should see if we can actually enjoy ourselves in the city for a change," he said, standing up and wobbling uneasily before he steadied himself, "Imagine that, Gryllus and V-Twenty, out enjoying their youth. Unbelievable, really."

He offered her his hand, and she grasped it, pulling herself up and raising an eyebrow at his too-wide grin and altogether exaggerated excitement.

"Are you trying to make me stay?" she asked quietly, still hoarse but feeling oddly free with her words.

He paused for a second, walking beside her in silence, it seemed like he was considering whether or not to ignore the question.

"Yes," he responded, "And I thought I was the unpredictable one."

"Why?" she asked, even quieter than before. He laughed gently to himself, and shook as head, as if in disbelief.

"Because I love you."

She stared at him.

He laughed.

"Pathetic, isn't it?"

* * *

_Author's Note: I would like clarify, right now, that I am intentionally leaving some things Craig is saying here ambiguous, especially what type of love he's talking about. Craig does have a detailed backstory, but I just don't think it's important to the story, only to how his character behaves so I won't go into it. Besides, it's fun leaving some things up to reader interpretation, and I'm pretty sure people are sharp enough to get the general idea._

_The next few chapters will probably be the last, so I would like to thank everybody who's read this far. Please enjoy the last few chapters!_


	18. Walk

**Chapter XVIII  
Walk**

It was a completely surreal experience – she was walking through a busy, unfamiliar town with somebody she barely recognised, in a body that made her do a double-take from confusion if she caught sight of herself.

She looked up at Craig – which alone was strange, considering she'd grown used to being he same height as him – and couldn't familiarise herself with how bizarre his hair looked – cut short, dyed fair and it even almost looked under control, not without a lot of effort on the part of the distressed barber. He looked almost like a completely different person, having traded his black attire for jeans and a white T-shirt.

Admittedly, these clothes were also from the rucksack he'd stolen from that trainer girl, so he looked somewhat comedic.

"Yes, yes, I'm in tight trousers," he said dryly, smiling despite his sarcasm, "It was funny for the first fifteen minutes."

She laughed, unable to shake off the sinking guilty deep inside herself – she didn't know how on earth she was managing to enjoy herself despite everything that had happened. Though, she felt entirely strange all-around – she felt like she just wanted to bury everything that had ever been real in the past. It was as if her life was already overflowing with emotions and pain, so she just wanted to put a lid on it and start anew, as a normal human. Truly, this time.

Even as she thought this, Craig's smile broadened to a grin.

The sun was hot on her skin, the clear sky only impeded by the tall figures of the Lilycove City buildings. The streets hummed with excitement, bustling with the energy of the shoppers, the travellers, the groups crossing streets, laughing and talking, all adorned in quirky Hoenn fashion. Pokemon trotted alongside their trainers, women stopped to stare and coo at shop windows, babies babbled in their prams, throwing their toys onto the pavement and giggling at their own daring as weary parents moved to retrieve them.

Phonos was more aware than ever of the beauty of everyday human life. She wondered idly how many people appreciated what was the mundane and boring for them.

Craig had warm hands and soft skin. She imagined Dad would have said it was because he didn't do any real work. Well, he would have said something like that when Annie was still alive.

_Don't think about it, _she told herself firmly, ignoring the wave of unease that made her stumble and threatened to sweep her off her feet. She didn't want to think anymore.

The smell of fresh, warm bread wafted into her nostrils, and Craig suddenly stopped in his tracks. Phonos ground to a halt and became aware of the hunger gnawing out her insides.

"Is that a bakery?" Craig asked.

"Sandwich shop," she replied.

"Even better! I'm starving," Craig exclaimed, as if he wanted to make sure the entire street knew. He was still acting odd; he was just acting too cheerful.

He dug around in his pocket as Phonos guided him inside the shop and to the front counter.

"Here," he said, stuffing some money into her hand, "Get something good, for both of us. _Both of us_."

Phonos was very sure that she shouldn't allow herself food after everything she'd done, but Craig had said it loud enough so that everybody in the shop had heard and, strangely enough, most of them were all giving her thing body scrutinising, judgement and somewhat pitying looks. She felt her face go hot. She didn't know what he'd done, but she didn't doubt that it was on purpose and had been done well. She could swear that she saw a triumphant smirk on his face, if just for a second.

The man behind the counter looked the pair up and down, as if trying to assess what such odd people were doing in his shop. She fidgeted nervously, wildly thinking for a moment that he was connected with the Institute and their freedom was already over, and stuttered as she made her order.

"Your friend could really use a guide-Sentret," he grunted, gesturing vaguely in Craig's direction.

They took their sandwiches and sat down with them. Craig rambled away, ripping apart his meatball sub mercilessly while Phonos nibbled at hers guiltily, before her sheer hunger overwhelmed her and she wolfed it down without control, nodding and humming vaguely at whatever Craig said.

It all felt so normal. It was the weird situation Phonos had ever been in, and she loved every second of it. A small, rebellious part of her whispered that everything could easily be like this for the rest of her life. She wouldn't have to fight for her own humanity anymore, she wouldn't have to fight anything anymore.

"What about Toxin?" Phonos said abruptly, the thought only suddenly occurring to her. Craig halted mid-sentence.

"He knows Fifty-Two escaped and is in a Pokeball with us. He was tired so I…" he trailed off hopelessly, offering her a forlorn smile, "You're not going to be distracted, are you?"

Phonos winced at the desperation in his voice and blinked hard.

"I…did promise him," she continued, "And Dad. Annie needs to _see_ him, at least. I owe them that much…she must be terrified."

Craig only nodded and took a bite from his sandwich, looking distant. He seemed genuinely concerned for Fifty-Two – it probably weighed heavy on his conscience, she realised with a jolt of regret and sickness. She didn't know where she had been all the time she was working on Fifty-Two, she had become disgustingly obsessed and ruthless. She wished her memory was hazy of that time, but she could remember it sharply – those endless days of ignoring Craig's weariness, charging on and on and killing all those clones, destroying herself and everything she loves in her obsession. It was shameful, really.

She couldn't help but marvel at why he wanted to stay anywhere near her. She glanced at his face; pale, cut, dark beneath his tired eyes, gaunt. It was all her fault. Her teeth dug into her lip.

"It's still up to you. But I don't think we should torture Toxin any further. Or you. Or Dr Lester. I think it's time to just accept it," he said quietly, his exhaustion suppressing every syllable. His voice was low, but he wasn't attempting hypnosis. In fact, he hadn't done that in a very long time. Throughout her obsession, had he became as lost as she had? No, that wasn't Craig. Craig always knew where he was going, even in the shadows.

She buried her face in her hands, as if expecting to see the answers form in the darkness in her palms. She looked up at him, cringing inwardly at the fatigue evident on his face; the years he'd gathered in such a short time, and made her decision.

"It's pointless going along with the Institute any further, isn't it?" she said weakly, smiling at him despite her mind shrieking viciously at her for what she was saying, "Mum's gone, Annie's gone…and I don't think I can repair Dad, really…I think he's beyond me just "fixing" him."

She paused, feeling old beyond her years. Her throat was still dry and painful, and this was probably the longest and most coherent thing she's ever said in her life. She wasn't thinking - the words were just spilling out her mouth, ignoring everything that screamed inside for her to shut up and stop.

"I've done so many things wrong in my life," she remarked gently, hoping to god he wasn't looking further into her mind. He seemed too tired to try, and his face was full of such trust she doubted he would want to. It left a cold pain in her chest.

"I think it's best if I move away from the Institute and try to, well, atone for all the horrible things I've done," she said, trailing off as she realised how stupid it all sounded. It was the truth, but she couldn't shake the feeling she was lying and heard her father's voice booming inside her mind, telling her to speak truthfully, she could hear her mother telling her to sit up straight, her sister hissing swift insults, lifting a hand to smack her silent. She blinked several times, hard.

Craig smiled.

"I know there's probably something fighting inside of you, but I think you're doing the right thing."

Phonos wondered if he knew how much those words stung. 

* * *

_You've pissed me off. I'm going to hurt you. You've hurt me so much. I love you. Stop it stop it stop it! Tearing apart fifty two's asleep, find her find her release the pain she's lost in the snow she's so quiet so quiet I'm sure you love her my name is Phonos, I'm a normal little girl and there's blood on my hands. _

_It's all apart, help me!_

_In pieces I'm flying I'm flying don't let me fall everything's wrong my name V-Twenty Phonos Phonos! V-Twenty Pho are you ready? Are you ready to kill me? You're nearly there, Pho, kill me!_

She jolted awake, gasping for breath. She felt as though somebody had been trying to smother her with a pillow in her sleep. The hotel room was dark, and the stars, shrouded by city smog, gleamed weakly through the window. She glanced over at Craig, who was asleep on the sofa, fidgeting slightly and a strain on his face, which seemed to ease into a contented, relaxed expression as she watched. She had to wonder if they had been sharing nightmares.

Not that it mattered. She pulled a hand through her thick hair as she swung out of the bed Craig had insisted she sleep in. She had wanted to tell him she wouldn't stay the whole night so he should take it, but she couldn't think of a way to say that ion a way that wouldn't be suspicious.

She had wanted to do everything she said yesterday. And she would – but she couldn't drag him along any further. If she told him she wanted to find Fifty-Two, he would have insisted on coming along. She couldn't stand it anymore. If she killed him like she'd killed her mother or Annie…she couldn't even describe it.

She took the dress off and folded it neatly, placing it at the foot of the bed, and opened the window. The familiar sensation of her body pulling apart and twisting into shape flooded her body, and she flew into the night.


	19. FiftyTwo

**Chapter XIX  
Fifty-Two**

"Hello, my name is Yomiko Lester, and I'm looking for my sister."

In two long months, this had become the most frequently used phrase in Phonos' vocabulary. As she offered photographs (taken of herself copying the real thing, of course), descriptions, stuttered to complete strangers about the odd behaviour of her missing sister, Phonos felt her search grow more and more hopeless.

Her search led her back into Sinnoh, where she treaded as though on coals, feeling invisible eyes burning into her back all day – every face seemed to have knowledge of who she was, where she was from, _what_ she was. Her paranoia led her to different aliases, different disguises, but the question was always the same, and the photos of Annie never varied.

Similarly, the answers rarely varied as well. Most people waved their hands in dismissal, glancing in apology as they rushed past, or stopped to listen to her in bemusement before denying they'd ever seen her. Occasionally somebody had seen her, or somebody like her, and for reasons Phonos couldn't understand, some people would sometimes smile and lie, sending her on her way.

That was one of the many things that made her wish Craig was here – he would be able to convince people to be honest, or at least explain to her why some people lied.

"Ah, hm, what is your sister called, young lady? Something Lester, I imagine?" the man replied. Phonos cleared her throat nervously and fished some photos out of her bag.

"H-her name's Annie Lester, _this_ is what she looked like the last time we saw her," she said, presenting the set of photos. The stranger eyed them appraisingly, his mouth twisted to the side in concentration.

She glanced down at the photos herself; still feeling very uneasy presenting photographs of herself. The photos still felt somewhat dirty – paid for with stolen money, but it wasn't like she had much choice in the matter. She'd quickly found the fact she didn't actually exist and was constantly on the move a huge hindrance on her employability, so things had quickly turned desperate.

"Actually, that's a familiar face," he said suddenly, straightening up, one of the photos still in his hands and being observed carefully.

"Really?" she asked eagerly, feeling a bubble of hope inflating in her chest.

"Yes, yes. I'm from Snowpoint City you see, despite the name, it's not much more than a village. Ah, we always notice strange people, since the only traffic we get is trainers going in and out to go to the gym. And, well, lately the strangest thing – in Lake Acuity there's been reports of a lone woman wandering around, completely stark if you'd believe it! Honestly," he said, as Phonos silently listened, her eyes pleading for the man to continue with his story faster, "They always say she spends a lot of time trying to get into that cave – where Uxie is rumoured to live – mad young thing, they say. Not to mention inhuman – she doesn't seem to freeze or feel the cold at all. I saw her myself once, visiting the lake. Young women, slim, long curly black hair. She had the sharp nose of the girl in your photo, as well as the blue eyes. Yes, yes. I don't see how it could be her, but it was certainly a mirror image. Ah, thank you."

She pressed a few bills into his palms – half out of gratitude, half hoping to buy his silence and smile eagerly at him.

"Thank you, sir. You've been a great help. Thank you," she said.#

Snowpoint City was as small and quiet as the man had said so Phonos teleported in as an Abra and transformed back into human form, changing back into her clothes quickly and quietly behind the trees, without attracting any attention. Flakes of snow fell slowly from the sky, tugged gently this way and that by the cold breeze. She shivered and pulled her coat tighter around herself.

She walked through the snow, her feet crunching against the ice as she trudged towards the lake where her sister was rumoured to be wandering. The wind grew harsher as she left the silent, chilly town and the snow lashed against her face, throwing her hood off and whipping her hair behind her. She winced and fell to all fours, the clothes hanging limp around her slim body as she transformed again, leaping through the snow easily and elegantly on her new paws, her long claws slicing through the snow.

The scent of water led her through the snow, diving over turrets built by wild Snovers, clawing her way through the snow, which grew quicker and quicker – it was becoming a blizzard faster than she could imagine.

She dived beneath the trees, the branches clinging to her clothes and fur. As she emerged to the other side, the snow suddenly slowed around her and an overwhelming sense of calm enveloped her like a thick blanket. She breathed silently, creeping to the edge of the water – deep and blue.

Lake Acuity was a small body of water, but looking across it she felt a sense of strange calmness, a worldliness that eased her fears, as the unknown seemed to become non-existent. Was Annie attracted to this place for the sense of calmness? Perhaps. It was definitely something to do with the presence of Uxie.

She sat by the water's edge, and crawled out from the oversized clothes still clinging to her lanky Sneasel body, pushing them out of sight for the moment. She doubted Annie would appear if a human was waiting for her – especially the one she'd seen…do the horrible things that had caused her to run. Even with the calming lake before her, her stomach twisted uncomfortably at the thought.

A snap of a twig. A crunch of ice. A slightest ripple of the water.

Her long ear pricked and she looked up, sharp Sneasel eyes glaring through the cloudy haze of snow. A figure had just wandered from the trees on a nearby side of the lake, and one of her bare legs hung in the water. With a wince, the woman put her other leg in and slipped into the water, easily paddling at the top.

Phonos leaned forward, watching carefully, restraining herself from mere curiosity to what this woman was trying to do, and if it was indeed her sister. The figure's dark hair was slicked by the water, but it seemed to be in long curls beforehand. The eyes were definitely Annie's – sharp and full of purpose, but there was a sort of unfocused despair and confusion in them as well, unfamiliar from her sister's. Phonos felt a pang of pain and regret.

The figure swam towards the strange island of stone in the centre of the lake – it was an odd feature, too high to be docked by anybody in the lake, but also too rugged and shapeless to be manmade. Perhaps it was the ever-falling snow around her confusing the situation, but Phonos could swear that she could make out carvings in the rock.

The woman, swam towards the rock, and stopped, pressing her palms to the side of the island. Phonos could no longer see the woman's face, and but she stretched and strained all her muscles desperately, sprawling her fingers against the side of the rock. She kicked and circled around the side of the island, palms pressed against it.

She just kept going round and round, shoulders shaking with the strain more and more with each lap. Phonos dug her claws into the snow, feeling a strange sort of pain tugging at her heartstrings, even if she couldn't identify it and didn't understand it.

She slipped into the water, her flesh pulling apart and stretching back to human form without her consent. The icy water stung at her flesh but her Pokemon heat-and-cold resistances gave her strength to not scream as she kicked towards the ever-circling figure.

That was Annie, she was sure of it. Annie would have the tenacity to try whatever the woman was doing endlessly.

Annie was paused, stretching her arms across the rock, her shoulders shaking and Phonos could swear she heard her spit some swear words and growls of frustration, in between low, muffled sobs.

Her bony arm reached out despite herself, and wrapped her fingers lightly around the other woman's arm. Annie recoiled violently, staring in horror at the figure that had appeared beside her. Phonos' saw herself in Annie's eyes – a gaunt stranger, all-too-similar curly black hair descending down her back, bright green eyes staring her older sister in the face, not looking away or blinking in fear.

"V-Twenty," Annie said blankly. Phonos winced inwardly at the name, despite the fact it had only been a few months, it felt like a long time since anybody had called her by that.

For a few heartbeats, neither woman moved, merely kicking their legs to stay afloat in the icy water.

"You need to come back," Phonos said, her tongue suddenly dry and her voice suddenly hoarse. Despite how she'd been searching for her sister, she was at a loss of what to say. What could she?

Annie merely stared back at her, challenging Phonos to convince her with her gaze.

"P-please, Dad needs you. Toxin needs you, I don't know what you're doing, but you need to go back. I won't even be there, if that's why you're running, I know you're not perfect but you're as close as we have, you're _all _we have," she said, trailing off stupidly. Annie's expression didn't change, "Annie…"

"Shut _up_!" Annie screamed, kicking away so violently that Phonos lost her grip. Without warning, Annie threw herself against the rock, fingers sprawled against it, "Please open! Please! I know what you can do! Please! Please!"

"Annie…"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I'm not Annie, shut _up_. It's not real, I – she wasn't injured! Shut _up_!" Fifty-Two screeched, her nails digging into the rock, as she pressed herself closer to it, her screaming intensifying with every word, "Humans aren't supposed to survive what I do! I'm not supposed to hear these things! I can hear you; I can hear everything in your head! You're thinking all these things, you're thinking about how it all went wrong, how Fifty-Two isn't Annie. You've just faked everything that's inside me, there's nothing real about me, and you've screwed with my head! _Shut up!_"

Phonos stared at her creation as she screamed in Annie's voice, The calmness and clarity that had entered her mind upon appearing at the lake had vanished, and had been replaced by a sickening regret and a filthiness that seemed to spread across her whole body and threatened to never vanish.

"I'm so sorry. Oh god. I'm so, so sorry," she said stupidly, knowing there wasn't much else she could say. She could only let her mouth hang after blurting out redundant apology after redundant apology.

Fifty-Two twisted her face away from the stone, glaring at Phonos.

"You're a stupid thing," Fifty-Two said scornfully, an edge of sadness in her angry voice. Her shoulders shook and she blinked hard as she spoke, "You thought of that woman inside my head as a sister. Stupid thing."

Phonos extended her hand, then retracted it, feeling as thought her heart was being torn into shreds inside her chest.

"C-come with me anyway," Phonos blurted out, overwhelmed by the surge of kinship she felt looking at the broken creature she'd created, Fifty-Two twisted her lip in disgust, "I'm sorry. I won't take you back; I'll help you build your life. Please, we're the same!"

Fifty-Two tossed her head back and laughed.

"You're the same as Annie remembers you! You were always clingy, V-Twenty, you're still seeking family even now. I won't hit you, like Annie did. We're the same, hm," Fifty-Two replied, giggling mirthlessly, glancing at the stone in front of her then back at the woman swimming beside her, "We're not the same because I don't want to be anywhere near the one who hurt me."

With surprising speed, Fifty-Two kicked away and swam to the edge, running away through the trees. Phonos let out a startled cry before pursuing her.

Fifty-Two had disappeared into the blizzard.

The snow was vicious, the wind tearing into her body as she snapped out of her delusion.

She may be screaming, she wasn't sure. Her brain felt cloudy and empty, and her ears simply echoed the noises around her dimly.

A voice was still calling her.

Phonos jerked around; the snow biting at her skin as she dizzily stared up into nothing.

Her skull threatened to crush her brain. Her back ached, bones tore at her skin, her skeleton mutating in desperation to stay alive, after all transformation was her primary function, it was the one thing she fell back on in desperation. She managed to glance at her arm lying to her right – little more than a bloodied, badly transformed mess. Traces of magenta goop. She almost laughed.

She swore she saw a face in the snow.

She had promised so many things. Fifty-Two had still escaped, and perhaps it was for the best. Fifty-Two had given her those few moments of worth, had given her a smile from her mother, approval from her father. What more could a little girl like Phonos want? She was only human.

"Have a happy life, Fifty-Two," she whispered.

The voice was still calling, even as she felt herself disappear.


	20. Chance

**Chapter XX  
Chance**

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

He heard the wind whistling, the snow crunching between his feet, and felt the snow whip his face. He took a deep, shuddering breath, setting one foot carefully in front of the other, feeling constrained in the thick coats he was wearing.

But he had a chance here. He had been tracking Pho, though she moved quickly and altered her appearance often, and now he'd have the chance to confront her properly. He could recognise her mind whenever he was near though – he knew it well.

The wind was making his eyes water, and he wiped his face with his sleeve. He cast his mind out, feeling the tug of a familiar conscience ahead of him.

His legs speeded up, almost stumbling over as he felt a pain in the back of his mind from Pho. A desperate pain, and his heart hammered in his chest. It almost felt like she was dying.

He stumbled and felt Toxin hold him up by his side, the arachnid as intent on finding Pho as he was. The Ariados staunchly refused to go back into his pokeball, despite the discomfort and weariness resonating from the Pokemon's mind. Toxin couldn't possible last any longer in this cold, no matter what the stubborn creature seemed to think. He had to admire the pokemon's loyalty to Pho, though.

"Sorry, dude," he managed to choke out against the wind, picking Toxin's pokeball from his belt and pressing it against the Ariados' side. He heard a squeak of protest and felt the pokeball warm up and wobble in his hand, and knew that the weakened Ariados had been sucked inside. He clipped it back at his belt.

Pho was still in pain ahead. His pace quickened, and the banging between his eardrums got harder and louder as he got closer. The noise of the wind seemed to be muffled by his determination. She was close. She was very close.

He reached out, the banging in his head drowning out all other sources of noise as he approached, and he felt the familiar presence of his friend before him. He bit his tongue, sweeping a hand downwards and feeling a body lying below, mutated and unnatural – he couldn't recognise the shape of the thing, but it held Pho's mind.

He crouched.

"Phonos," he said, trying to sound strong, trying to sound as though he knew she'd be alright.

"Phonos…you let Fifty-Two go, didn't you?" he said. Pho didn't seem to respond, her mind was in a jumble and she seemed confused. Was his words even reaching her? Or was he simply an alien from a distant world now. His words didn't seem to be reaching the young woman's mind.

He felt a bite of anger flaring up in her, stinging with her usual self-doubt and loathing. He sighed, bundling her up in his arms, trying to think what to do. She was transformed severely – he couldn't carry her away, she felt cold and stiff. Like a corpse, he thought, his stomach sinking.

"You…you'll live," he said, laughing a little at himself. It wasn't like what he said made a whole load of sense, but it felt good to say it. That was all that mattered, after all.

Pho was still writhing in his arms, and he laid her gently in the snow. He made a face at the amount of self-loathing she was going through, and he wondered again if he'd ever be able to bring out that inner strength he knew was somewhere inside her,

"Will you ever understand what you were given?" he asked her despairingly, somewhat exasperated. Her abilities were limitless, her intention to do good pure, and there was strength inside her. She could do so much. So much more than the bastards at the Bane Institute used her for. And she was every bit as human as she wanted to be – every bit as flawed and as pure.

He almost recoiled in horror as she began to scream, screeching and howling like nothing he'd ever heard. It was like a child's cry, completely unfiltered of emotion, un-jaded and untainted. The scream ripped at his ears and mind and he strained himself forward, wincing at the agony that seemed to contort Pho's bony body.

He heard the bones grind, he felt skin ripping away beneath his touch and his panic increased.

"Pho!" he yelled, trying to be heard over her screams, "Pho! Goddamnit….Pho…fuck!"

Her entire body was pulling apart, her mind felt as though it was shattering. He reached out to her mind, trying to pull her back, trying to hold her together. The screaming began to subside, reduced to hyperventilation. His hands were shaking.

She whispered something and he could almost laugh with relief. She was still there. He still had a chance. He had to act fast. He had to…his fingers strayed to a free pokeball at his belt.

He swallowed and a shiver swept through his body at the thought of what he had to do to give her another go at life.

"I'm sorry, Pho. Pho…you can hear me…no I didn't think so. It doesn't matter. But I'm sorry," he said, "This is something you'd never want to do, you'd rather die. But I'd rather you not, quite frankly."

He laughed shakily at his own joke, feeling as though he was about to go insane.

"We've done a lot wrong," he said weakly, feeling Pho's mind respond slightly. She could at least hear his voice, if not the words, "A lot. If I do this, we've got one last shot. We can try to make up for it."

He unclipped an empty pokeball at his belt.

"This is against everything you ever wanted."

She didn't respond. He pressed the pokeball against her arm and felt her disappear.

"But we've got one last chance to make it all better, Pho. One last chance."

**The End**

* * *

Author's Note: I hope you've enjoyed reading this, and thank you for doing so, even if you didn't particularly like it :B This is something I've enjoyed writing immensely and I think I've learned a lot from writing it. I never intended for this thing to get so long or complicated, haha. I think this will most likely be the last pokemon fanfic I will write for a while yet, but please look out for me in other fandoms if you enjoyed this.

And again, thank you very much for reading,

Otte


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